TTNNA boss dismisses fraud claims levelled at nurses

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art is dis­miss­ing al­le­ga­tions of fraud lev­elled at nurs­es by North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh.

Speak­ing dur­ing the NCRHA’s Pub­lic Board Meet­ing at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, on Thurs­day evening, Gopeesingh said the au­thor­i­ty had re­quest­ed a foren­sic au­dit in­to ex­ces­sive over­time pay­ments and oth­er ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at the NCRHA.

“When we came in, over­time pay­ments for pool nurs­ing were close to $40 mil­lion. We have now brought that fig­ure down to less than $4 mil­lion while main­tain­ing ad­e­quate nurs­ing per­son­nel. It still needs im­prove­ment, and with the hir­ing of 78 ad­di­tion­al nurs­es, we ex­pect fur­ther progress,” Gopeesingh said.

In re­sponse, how­ev­er, Stu­art said over­time was a di­rect re­sult of staff short­age and any at­tempt to link it to any un­to­ward be­hav­iour on the part of nurs­es was disin­gen­u­ous.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion is re­al­ly trou­bled that Dr Gopeesingh has the abil­i­ty to ba­si­cal­ly cast as­per­sions on thou­sands of nurs­ing per­son­nel who would have per­formed ex­tra du­ty, who would have been asked to work ex­tra du­ty, who were re­quired to work ex­tra du­ty be­cause of the short­age of staff,” Stu­art said.

He added, “They are be­ing vil­i­fied for work­ing that ex­tra du­ty and plac­ing the lives of pa­tients even be­fore their own health.”

Nurs­ing over­time is not a new is­sue, as it was first raised ear­li­er this year when Gopeesingh cut over­time rates from $75 an hour to $60.

Gopeesingh re­mind­ed those gath­ered on Thurs­day that Min­istry of Fi­nance reg­u­la­tions, guid­ed by di­rec­tives from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, stip­u­lates that nurs­es should not re­ceive more than $60 per hour, ex­cept in three spe­cialised ar­eas: op­er­at­ing the­atres, in­ten­sive care units (ICU), and men­tal health ser­vices.

In April, af­ter the cut was made, Stu­art led a mas­sive ral­ly through Port-of-Spain de­mand­ing from the Health Min­istry a time­line on wage ne­go­ti­a­tion set­tle­ments. He lat­er ad­vised nurs­es to em­bark on a work-to-rule, where he re­quired them to care for no more than six pa­tients at a time.

Yes­ter­day, Stu­art re­vealed that the as­so­ci­a­tion es­ti­mates that some 500 ad­di­tion­al nurs­es are need­ed to cov­er the ex­ist­ing in­sti­tu­tions un­der the NCRHA um­brel­la. He said the re­duced over­time is neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing pa­tient care

“What is hap­pen­ing cur­rent­ly, since you have re­duced the over­time, those nurs­es are not out on the ward tak­ing care of pa­tients. You have re­duced the amount of avail­abil­i­ty of that pool. What is hap­pen­ing to the care of those pa­tients? Who is per­form­ing the care cur­rent­ly?”

Stu­art said the TTNNA has re­quest­ed da­ta that he be­lieves will show a cor­re­la­tion be­tween high­er death rates at the NCRHA and oth­er re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) and lack of nurs­ing staff. He added that while the in­for­ma­tion is eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble by the au­thor­i­ties, there seems to be a con­cert­ed ef­fort not to di­vulge the in­for­ma­tion.

“This is rest­ing very heavy on our minds. How is it so dif­fi­cult for the NCRHA and oth­er RHAs to be able to pro­vide that da­ta. Some­thing that should be at the tip of the fin­ger of all RHAs. We are not ask­ing how many peo­ple fell off a bed or got in­jured by a nee­dle stick. We are ask­ing how many peo­ple died.”

He added that the in­for­ma­tion seemed to be the one sta­tis­tic that the RHAs do not want to di­vulge at pub­lic meet­ings, as the num­ber of surg­eries done and what was pur­chased or not is usu­al­ly dis­cussed but nev­er mor­tal­i­ty rates.