District health centres taking in patients

National, Normal
Source:

The National,Friday23 December 2011

By YVONNE HAIP
District health centres in Western Highlands will now accept patients in stable condition to help ease overcrowding at Mt Hagen provincial hospital.
The hospital said because of its shortage of beds, patients in a stable condition would be transferred to their respective district health centres.
Provincial health authority chief executive officer Dr James Kintwa said the Kindeng health centre was ready to take in patients who would continue to receive treatment until they were discharged.
Other health centres would be doing the same soon as part of the Public Health Authority Act trialled in the province was approved.
Kintwa said rural health centres staff and district health officers were expected to be
at their respective centres to care for patients who were repatriated there.
He said this was a way of ensuring that health workers were at the health centres and doing their jobs.
Kintwa said overcrowding, as well as guardians not obeying visitation rules, had caused a management crisis in wards.
Overcrowding raised the risk of cross infection between patients, patient to guardians, patient to nurse or vice versa.
He said post operative surgical wounds could get infected and break down because
of the overcrowded wards.
The hospital had decided to relocate stable patients to their own district health centres for their own safety and health and doctors from the hospital would do two to three ward rounds per week in the health centres
so that transferred patients were not disadvantaged.