Elective Surgeries to Resume at K.H.M.H. on Monday Says Dr. Adrian Coye

Adrian Coye

The nation’s largest hospital was hit with a national embarrassment earlier this week when news broke that the K.H.M.H. was unable to facilitate elective surgeries and that there were no beds. C.E.O. Doctor Adrian Coye says it was a necessary decision to clear a back log of patients. It is expected that surgeries will resume on Monday, August tenth. Coye clarified what is causing the issue.

Dr. Adrian Coye, C.E.O. K.H.M.H.

“We have exceeded our capacity to offer elective surgeries. Now, we want to maintain the quality of care that we give. We want to maintain the right ratios of nurses and doctors to patients. In many ways, in the past, we have bent over to accommodate as best as we can but that leads to burn out syndrome and challenges everyone—all the resources—all the facilities. So, in that way we recognized it and wanted to give the hospital a chance to clear out all those difficult cases that are there back logged. Of course, just by the numbers, on Monday I was saying that we had ten patients needing admission to the surgical ward in the Accident and Emergency. The Accident and Emergency has a bed capacity of about twenty, so half of that bed capacity is of patients admitted jus to the surgical ward alone. The surgical ward has twenty eight beds as capacity and if two discharges happen, it would have to take those patients. If in recovery room after surgeries, emergency surgeries, you have three, four patients, they too would have to go to the ward. So, it is impossible to take patients electively. Even though we would like to do that for everyone, we were not able to.  Up to yesterday, as an update, we had six patients in the emergency room trying to get beds on the ward. So, it is not a matter of not having beds to put patients on, that is not the issue, it is a matter of the capacity that we have.”