The cash-strapped Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) continues to have to deal with faulty machinery, which is affecting its ability to provide proper health care to Barbadians.
This time, patients with heart ailments are the ones feeling the pain.
And in the next few weeks the machinery problems could see the hospital forking out thousands of dollars as it is forced to pay private institutions in the range of 100 per cent more than what outpatients pay for the same tests in the Cardiac Unit at the QEH.
For the past week, officials at the Martindale’s Road, St Michael institution have been forced to bite the bullet and send patients to private clinics, where tests known as echocardiograms can be conducted.
That’s because a number of echocardiogram machines in the hospital’s Cardiac Unit have been off-line most of the week. Scores of Barbadians with heart problems, and who cannot afford the price at private clinics, utilize the QEH.
The SATURDAY SUN can reveal today that numerous cardiology patients who were waiting to have echocardiograms done were called by QEH officials this week, telling them not to attend future appointments because the echocardiogram machines are not in working order.
