Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
St Joseph's Hospital on Deanery Road in Vineyard Town, St Andrew.

Petrina Francis, Staff Reporter

Claiming that it cannot expand the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) building due to a lack of space, Government plans to purchase and develop St Joseph's Hospital - a private facility - into a modern trauma centre. St Joseph's Hospital is located in Vineyard Town, St Andrew.

"We intend to build an institution of excellence at St Joseph's. KPH offers the best trauma care in the Caribbean. KPH sits on five and a half acres of land and it is difficult to go up with it," Health Minister Rudyard Spencer tells The Sunday Gleaner.

He adds: "You can't get parking and you can't (expand) sideways and, therefore, one of the considerations is whether or not a very modern trauma centre can be located at St Joseph's Hospital, among other things."

Spencer says Government was in negotiations with the hospital's board and its lawyers. "We are awaiting the normal procedures through the commissioner of lands, and so on," he discloses.

Last week, Dr Fenton Ferguson, Opposition spokesman on health, expressed concern over the Government's intention to purchase the private health facility.

Ferguson said he was concerned about the "lack of openness, transparency and dialogue that have characterised this arrangement".

He disclosed that he was worried about the economic viability of the deal and the security of tenure of the workers.

Adequate land space

Dr Myo Oo, consultant psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital in Kingston, last year suggested that some of the services at KPH could be relocated to his institution, which had adequate land space.

He proposed that all the medical wards at KPH could then be used to accommodate surgical patients. This, he said, would reduce the long waiting period patients endured for elective surgeries.

Dr Oo said there would be no need for additional staff for the medical wards, which would be at Bellevue, but the cadre of doctors and nurses would have to be increased for the surgical wards at KPH.

petrina.francis@gleanerjm.com