NCRHA rejects TTRNA claims over patient care

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, NCRHA, has re­ject­ed claims made by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion, TTR­NA, sug­gest­ing wors­en­ing pa­tient out­comes with­in the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued to­day, the NCRHA said on­go­ing im­prove­ments in pa­tient flow and ser­vice de­liv­ery showed mea­sur­able progress across the re­gion de­spite long­stand­ing fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional chal­lenges in­her­it­ed from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Au­thor­i­ty said mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty fig­ures im­proved from 275 deaths record­ed in Jan­u­ary 2026 to 206 deaths record­ed in April 2026.

The NCRHA al­so re­port­ed in­creased sur­gi­cal op­er­a­tions, re­duced wait­ing times for ad­mis­sions from Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ments to wards, im­proved clean­li­ness and work­ing con­di­tions, and a re­duc­tion in nurs­ing ab­sen­teeism from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent to 18 per cent.

The re­sponse comes af­ter so­cial me­dia claims made by the TTR­NA con­cern­ing con­di­tions with­in the health au­thor­i­ty and pa­tient care out­comes.

Ac­cord­ing to the NCRHA, its Board of Di­rec­tors, which took of­fice in Au­gust 2025, in­her­it­ed se­vere fi­nan­cial con­straints, wide­spread op­er­a­tional in­ef­fi­cien­cies, bro­ken-down med­ical equip­ment and non-ex­is­tent main­te­nance pro­grammes.

The Au­thor­i­ty said hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were owed to sup­pli­ers for main­te­nance, med­ical equip­ment and es­sen­tial ser­vices, with some sup­pli­ers halt­ing ser­vices be­cause of un­paid bills. This, the NCRHA said, re­sult­ed in short­ages of crit­i­cal sup­plies, in­clud­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry reagents, and de­lays in equip­ment re­pairs.

Among the fi­nan­cial is­sues iden­ti­fied were more than $124 mil­lion paid to a jan­i­to­r­i­al com­pa­ny over two years with­out ten­der or con­tract, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $250 mil­lion paid to se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies over a ten-year pe­ri­od with­out ten­der or con­tract, more than $350 mil­lion owed to over 300 com­pa­nies, and about $98 mil­lion be­ing paid an­nu­al­ly in over­time wages “with­out ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty”.

The NCRHA al­so out­lined op­er­a­tional de­fi­cien­cies af­fect­ing pa­tient care, in­clud­ing long wait­ing times for surg­eries, sig­nif­i­cant sur­gi­cal and di­ag­nos­tic back­logs, de­lays for CT scan and MRI ap­point­ments, ex­tend­ed clin­ic wait­ing times, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions in Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ments, and bro­ken-down med­ical equip­ment.

The Au­thor­i­ty said dras­tic cost-cut­ting ini­tia­tives and tighter fis­cal man­age­ment in­tro­duced in re­cent months cre­at­ed the fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty to ex­pand health­care ser­vices and ad­dress in­her­it­ed back­logs and op­er­a­tional de­fi­cien­cies.

Mea­sures in­tro­duced in­clude Sat­ur­day op­er­at­ing the­atre ses­sions, ex­tend­ed week­day the­atre hours un­til 6 pm, over­time ser­vices for CT scans and MRI scans, ad­di­tion­al nurs­ing sup­port, over­time com­pen­sa­tion for health­care per­son­nel, and in­creased sur­gi­cal op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing can­cer and car­diac surg­eries and treat­ment for stroke pa­tients.

The Au­thor­i­ty al­so an­nounced the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a $75 in­cen­tivised al­lowance rate for reg­is­tered nurs­es.

“The Au­thor­i­ty main­tains that no pa­tient op­er­a­tion must be un­nec­es­sar­i­ly post­poned and wait­ing times must not be­come un­favourable to mem­bers of the pub­lic seek­ing health­care ser­vices,” the re­lease said.

The NCRHA ac­knowl­edged nurs­es who vol­un­teered to work ex­tend­ed shifts to main­tain con­ti­nu­ity of pa­tient care and said at least 50 ad­di­tion­al nurs­es had been in­ter­viewed and re­cruit­ed over the past two months to strength­en staffing lev­els and im­prove nurse-to-pa­tient ra­tios.

The Au­thor­i­ty said that with­in nine months, many long­stand­ing is­sues had al­ready been ad­dressed and the NCRHA was now strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned to con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing med­ical ser­vices and im­prov­ing health­care de­liv­ery through­out the re­gion.