Excellent care no thanks to management

The Princess Elizabeth Hospital has many staff who do an excellent job caring for patients. Most people are full of praise for the service that they receive.

However, just because there are many staff devoted to giving their patients excellent care does not mean that the hospital is well managed.

The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee has said that the department is haemorrhaging money. And it certainly does not have efficient accounting services.

Fees for some private treatments are much greater than those in the UK and it would appear that many private patients are being overcharged, and even charged twice for the same procedure.

In November 2012 the management recommended the closure of a ward to save money. Management advised the then board that advertising and recruitment would commence at the time of the closure so that plans would be in place to re-open the ward in January or February, with permanent as opposed to agency staff.

This did not occur until six months later.

Deputy Storey later admitted that this lost the department £100,000 a month in lost revenue from private patients who could no longer be treated. The staff bill for the ward that was closed was about £62,500 a month, so closing the ward, far from saving money lost an extra £37,500 a month on top of the existing overspend.

In addition, over a 12-month period 300 patients had their operations cancelled or postponed.

Is this really bosses doing a good job?

You quote Deputy Martin Storey saying: 'One thing we cannot do is withdraw or downgrade services that people rely on.' In fact HSSD are limiting the supply of drugs for the treatment of cancer to a greater extent than they have ever done in the past.

Although a ward has been reopened, there are still fewer beds than before so that operations are still cancelled from time to time.

The management have said that a decompression chamber to treat divers who suffer from the bends is not within their remit so that the island is without vital equipment. It will cost more to treat people off-island and there is a greater risk of permanent injury because of the time taken to take patients to a treatment centre.

Bowel cancer screening was not properly implemented. The management claimed that the budget had been spent when in fact it was grossly underspent. Many people were not screened as intended so that some people will die as a result.

The cost of treating bowel cancer is probably around £50,000 per patient so screening actually saves money.

The island's medical services are reviewed by the British Medical Colleges. Four years ago it was recommended that the island needed an accident and emergency consultant and a second cardiologist. Neither of these appointments have been made.

The failure to employ a second cardiologist results in more people being sent off-island for treatment at much greater cost than treatment on-island.

Recruitment and retention of nursing staff is poor and several senior nurses have been so disillusioned that they have resigned. Agency nurses are employed at three times the cost of full-time staff.

It would be cheaper to improve the pay and conditions of nurses so that we had more local permanent staff.

Unfortunately any criticism of the management is often portrayed as a criticism of the dedicated front-line staff.

DEPUTY MIKE HADLEY,

La Rocque,

La Bouvee,

St Martin's,

GY4 6BQ.