Crime takes toll on K.H.M.H.
The increase in violent crimes has threatened the personal and commercial security of residents across the country, but tonight News Five’s Marion Ali discovered that it is also posing serious challenges to Belize’s tertiary referral centre: the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.
Marion Ali, Reporting
According to Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital’s Director Medical Services, Doctor Khalid Ghazy, victims of crime are the most expensive patients to care for.
Khalid Ghazy, Dir., Medical Services, K.H.M.H.
“The Karl Heusner Hospital bed occupancy is one hundred and thirty-five beds including pediatrics, special care unit and obstetric and gyne. But the major things will be the surgical admission because of the crime rate, the rate or the time of admission because those patients will stay more in the hospital. We have twenty-five bed capacity at surgical ward and during this rising in the crime most of these beds are occupied by gunshot victims and stab wounds and accident victims. We do have to apologize for the public because we cannot perform other kind of surgeries; gallbladder stones and patients—actually we are turning back patients and yesterday a patient was turned back for the fourth time form the hospital because we cannot perform surgery.”
Khalid says the problem of not being able to perform elective surgery is becoming frustrating for the staff … and the patients.
Khalid Ghazy
“If you are planning yourself to get surgery tomorrow and you set in your mind your mind you are down for surgery and when you reach to the hospital or you get a call from the hospital saying I’m sorry you cannot come today because we do not have bed for you. This has a huge on the public of what Karl Heusner will do in the near future. It’s a proposal now, we are planning, as I was telling you, to maybe expand certain services; the surgical services might have to be expanded. The bed occupancy in the surgical ward might have to increase to accommodate the trauma victims and the crime victims and the elective surgeries.”
But while space has become an urgent problem, the criminal activities are also taking a financial toll. The administrative team at K.H.M.H. reports that the bills of some victims of crime run as high as ten thousand dollars.
Khalid Ghazy
“Because of the serious injury that they have, a lot of doctors and nurses and supplies need to be directed to that impact. Studies; we’re talking about CT scans, echocardiograms and huge impacts that will come up always to the hospital. So if we are estimating cost, that is for accident and emergency costs, it’s very expensive to maintain those and you’re talking about a lot of supplies. An ordinary patient will take one bandage but the gunshot victim will take maybe ten or fifteen … a roll of bandage and cottons and all the things they need for the surgery.”
Marion Ali
“Who pays for those?”
Khalid Ghazy
“Actually most of the victims, those crimes and incidents, they are not working people and we know that very good. So most of it comes from Karl Heusner itself. This is coming from the central Government which is already subsidized by the Government of Belize. So this is a huge impact on resources for Karl Heusner.”
Tonight Ghazy assured the public that the increase in costs on the institution’s pocket will not translate into higher fees to the regular patient. He also said that the Karl Heusner has a plan to increase its occupancy rate in many of its wards. But before that plan comes through, the increased crime rate has prompted K.H.M.H to address the urgent need for more beds.
Khalid Ghazy
“At the interim point we have to work on, in my opinions, some kind of plan with maybe a regional hospital that includes maybe certain cases might be referred from the district. We will have to give them a grace period of stabilization and have to send them back as fast as possible. So that will work our occupancy rate to be flexible enough to accommodate cases. I agree with your point because if we have no plan right now that means we are going to shut down our services and we just focus on one direction which is the trauma and gunshot victim. But we are open minded in that discussion where we are first now at this present time, we are utilizing fifty bed occupancy which is medical/surgical ward to divert patients in between so we can—let’s say a male patient can go to the surgical ward while the nurses will take care of them in the medical side but that is also not flexible enough.”
At present the hospital has sufficient doctors to deal with the current situation, but if crime escalates further, Ghazy says there will be a need to take on more surgeons and orthopedic specialists. Marion Ali for News Five.
