Inefficiencies in the departments of medicine and surgery, and the rising number of elderly for care (EFCs) and young for care (YFCs) population, have contributed to some of the delays being experienced at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
This was revealed by executive chairman Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland while addressing the QEH’s annual Public Accountability meeting titled QEH Strategic Plan For 2020-2022 in the hospital’s auditorium on Thursday night.
Providing statistics for the past three years, she said the EFC population rose from 151 people in 2017 to 163 in 2018 and 200 in 2019. Similarly, the YFCs increased from zero in 2017 to five in 2018, and 39 last year.
“These are people who eventually came to live in the hospital over that period of time. So when people are experiencing challenges in our Accident & Emergency room, it’s because of this bottleneck . . . . Essentially, people are coming in but we are not able to get people out of the beds quickly and safely enough, because we have some residents living with us,” Bynoe-Sutherland said. (TG)
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