Several concerns have been raised about the customer service offered to the general public and patients by the staff at the St Ann’s Bay Hospital.
These concerns were raised at the monthly meeting of the St Ann Municipal Corporation (SAMC).
The issues were raised by councillor of the Calderwood division, Paul McFarlane and councillor Lydia Richards of the Bensonton division.
For councillor McFarlane, he recounted his experience of taking his sister to the St Ann’s Bay Hospital on referral from her private practitioner. She was given pain killers and sent back home. It was on the third occasion that he had to resort to behaving in a boisterous manner in order for his sister to be admitted.
“I am talking about a patient who got a referral from a private practitioner. So it is that when we are here and sick and go to your private practitioner, it makes no sense you are to go to your public institution to get medical help. I personally need some answers so that I, as a representative of the people, can speak to the people that I represent and direct them accordingly, because it makes no sense if you go and get any attention. What reason would they (the people) have to go there?” McFarlane contended.
McFarlane said he had written to Mayor Michael Belnavis, who is also the chairman of the St Ann’s Bay Hospital and the North East Regional Health Authority (NERHA) about his own experience. However, he was yet to receive a response.
In response, Belnavis said that what he had heard from the councillor “should really not take place.”
He told councillor McFarlane that he would speak to the CEO of the hospital and the executive director of NERHA.
Meanwhile, councillor Lydia Richards also described her own experience with the treatment by staff at the St Ann’s Bay Hospital and said that she had to resort to talking loud. She was then told that she should “take time talk.”
“Something is not right. Something is definitely wrong at the hospital. Nobody cares,” she bemoaned.
