‘People must not fear visiting the PEH if they require care’
GUERNSEY’S health service is in pretty good shape and still retains the capacity to treat anyone in need of urgent care, according to the local British Medical Association representative.
Dr Mat Dorrian gave the reassurance after the Committee for Health & Social Care announced last week that patients were to be asked to leave the Princess Elizabeth Hospital as soon as it was clinically safe, as bed use was peaking as high as 98%.
Dr Dorrian described the bed shortage as ‘predictable but not avoidable’ due to unprecedented demand on services, resulting from a combination of a backlog of elective surgery caused by the Covid-19 lockdowns and a higher than normal island population.
‘Usually, a proportion of the population will be away from the island at any one time but with restrictions on travel in place, people are not really going off-island,’ he said.
‘So we’ve seen a corresponding increase in workload both at Accident and Emergency and through referrals from GPs. It’s understandable and I don’t see how this could have been staved off.
‘People must not fear visiting the hospital if they require care. Access to care is very good here, compared to the UK, for example.’
On Thursday, a lack of capacity in Guernsey’s care homes was highlighted as a contributory problem by the Care Managers Association.
Dr Dorrian said any aspiration to provide more care for people in home settings required planning, but this was a social and political issue, which he believed HSC was committed to resolving.
When asked whether the PEH could cope with a further outbreak of Covid-19, Dr Dorrian said there were ‘lots of contingencies’ in place and described the hospital as ‘a well-oiled machine’ where Covid response was concerned.
‘Also, other parts of the hospital would not be as busy in that event,’ he said.
‘Our house is in pretty good shape.’
