RHA CEO: Parallel health care capacity increased

North Central Regional Health Authority CEO Davlin Thomas said the capacity of the parallel health care system is being increased exponentially to ensure the system can surpass the demand of the new cases being presented daily.

This comes after the Chief Medical Officer said on Wednesday that the system is not overburdened, but warned that that could change rapidly if people did not adhere to the covid19 health regulations and protocols.

Thomas said while there is an increase in numbers of patients, the NCRHA was increasing the inherent capacity in non-traditional spaces. He reminded that the spaces in the health care system can be broken down into hospital spaces, quarantine spaces and step-down facilities.

“To illustrate that, if we have ten people coming into the system, we just increased inherent capacity at Canada Hall by 160 rooms for step-down.

"So once the patients are triaged and we know who needs to go into quarantine, the issue for us is maintaining comfort and monitoring and clinical care if necessary. So we’re in a situation where even though we have increases in the flow, because we have been engaging in increasing inherent capacity, there hasn’t been any decrease in capacity.”

He said without looking at the numbers, capacity in the NCRHA was at approximately 50 per cent.

“There are different categories of patients and we put them strategically in different kinds of places.

"At the Arima Hospital we have 33 patients out of 150, in Couva Hospital we have 103, in Caura Hospital we have 161.

"However, the evaluation of that is not just the hospital space but those spread across the system. So basically we’re decanting to other facilities that have additional space, so those have to be included in your analysis of the total number.”

Thomas said that up to Thursday, the RHA had done site visits and would open new facilities before the end of the week, resulting in a lessening of the burden on the capacity to approximately 30 per cent.

“Because the second wave was inevitable, (and) we were in a situation where we were preparing for additional capacity, we should be pretty comfortable.

"We’re attempting to ensure the capacity always exceeds the demand.”