Scores of elderly patients remain in hospital well after the end of their treatment, Minister of Health Senator Lisa Cummins said on Monday, as she stressed the urgent need for step-down care and expanded support for the elderly amid an ageing population.
Step-down care is a form of transitional care that bridges the gap between inpatient treatment and independent living or lower-level care.
Her comments came amid repeated appeals to Barbadians to collect elderly relatives who remain at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital after they have been medically cleared.
“Last week, we had to make an appeal to the public, come and get your relatives. Come and get your relatives,” Senator Cummins revealed in the Senate on Monday.
In some cases, elderly patients are being left behind because they are viewed as a burden or because relatives are unable to properly care for them at home, she said.
“That happens every single day. There are those. We have around 40 persons in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital who have largely been abandoned and their relatives.”
Cummins added that there must be some level of accountability among family members, particularly in cases where they continue to access pension payments on behalf of those relatives.
However, the minister was careful to point out that not all situations stem from neglect, noting that there are also genuine cases where families simply do not have the capacity to provide the necessary care.
“There are other genuine cases at the same time…there are persons who, in the absence of hospice care, rehabilitative care or post acute care, do not have anyone with the ability to care for them in their homes and their relatives, out of love for them, not abandonment, know that they can’t be cared for in their homes, and they’re better off internal to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and so they stay there until such time as they are fully recovered and can go home.”
She said this highlights the need for alternative care options within the healthcare system.
“How do we make sure that when persons leave the Queen Elizabeth Hospital post-acute care, that they also have ability to have step-down care, rehabilitative care.”
Senator Cummins revealed that efforts are also underway to expand local healthcare training and education to better meet the needs of the population.
“We’ve also met with the Barbados Community College and with the nurses about the importance of investment by way of the Ministry of Technical and Vocational Education and they have in their estimates of expenditure, you will see them in this appropriations bill …speaking about the creation of the University College of Barbados, and in that you’re meant to have a number of specific schools that are meant to be launched.”
As part of this plan, a School of Nursing is expected to be established to increase Barbados’ capacity to train more nurses, along with expanded training in pharmacy and other critical areas.
“And one of the things that we are going to be doing under these estimates of expenditure, Mr President, is building out something that I did in the Ministry of Energy, the future of work in health care. What are the skills that we need to build over the next year, the next two years, the next three years, to be able to correlate to the shortages we are experiencing now, on the one hand, but also to develop new disciplines and new specializations that position Barbados to be able to provide the kind of care that we have not been able to provide so far.”
Senaror Cummins added that there will also be significant expenditure on strengthening the diagnostics component of the healthcare sector, as the government continues its push to modernise and expand services.
(LG)
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