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The Ministry of Health will embark on a $6.8 million training programme for managers of its five Regional Health Authority (RHAs) this month.
The training is targeted to help managers and their teams improve on the delivery of services and efficiency in the public healthcare sector.
The announcement was made by Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh at a press conference yesterday.
Deyalsingh said the training programme was prompted after he had to intervene to a resolve an issue at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital last year, where kitchen staff protested over the lack of proper equipment.
“That is not my job. And what I identified was weak executive management,” he said.
Noting it was the job of the hospital’s facility’s manager to attend to such a problem, Deyalsingh said this showed up the fact that T&T lacked professionals with qualifications and training as well as “with exposure to hospital management.”
Too often, Deyalsingh said he gets calls from the public about non-functioning equipment when there were managers at each RHA to deal with such issues.
To address this shortcoming, he said they have engaged the United Nations Development Programme to undertake a US$1 million (TT $6.8 million) training programme to strengthen its RHA management capacity.
“That is what has been lacking in our healthcare system, managing capacity to manage workflow,” he said.
Those who will be targeted for training are the RHA management teams and hospital managers, he said. The training programme will be launched in Tobago in two weeks’ time, he added.
Deyalsingh said his ministry was also aiming for an “uptime of about 98 per cent” for its medical equipment.
“I have mandated each RHA to engage in preventative maintenance contracts with suppliers,” Deyalsingh said in the presence of four of the five RHA CEOs who attended the press conference.