New management approach touted for health sector

Jan 13, 2013 News

With a focus on human and material resources, a needful reform is required if the Ministry of Health is to better its current mode of operation. This is according to the Ministry’s Parliamentary Secretary, Joseph Hamilton, who during a recent Health Ministry forum at the Grand Coastal Inn, East Coast Demerara, sought to highlight the need for such a move.

Health Ministry Parliamentary Secretary, Joseph Hamilton

Hamilton told a gathering of mainly health care managers within the public health sector that “unless we operate differently our strategies will just be nice words on paper…All the people – the economist and management people – they say that it is man and material…those are the means of production and it is how you manage them that will determine whether you get results.”
He emphasised that it is crucial to address how persons at the level of senior management relate to each other as well as how they cooperate, collaborate and relate to the people they supervise.
“Do you make them feel comfortable? Do you make them feel wanted? Do you make them feel as part of what you are attempting to do? It is those persons who would have to effect the various programmes,” said Hamilton of lower level staff members within the health sector.”
According to the Parliamentary Secretary, “All I was seeking to do was refresh people’s minds to the fact that we have to manage our human resources and our material resources differently…If we fail to deal with these we will be unable to deliver the service that we are attempting to provide.”
He pointed to the fact that it is the doctors, nurses, x-ray technicians, phlebotomists among others who are on a daily basis delivering the services at various health care facilities “so how we treat them is fundamental to the delivery of that service they offer.”
Hamilton contended that if persons are going to lead effectively, they must embrace and practice the five crucial Cs – Compassion, Care, Consideration, Courtesy and Conciliation. According to him if leaders’ framework of management does not include these factors they are in fact just wasting their time. “People must feel part of you…you can’t have staff who are afraid of you; all they will do is bear the burden of being around you for the eight hours and then they are ready to go home….so we have to change that in my view,” Hamilton asserted.
Materials management, according to him, is equally important even as he alluded to instances when effective management was not evident within the health sector. According to him although the Ministry is healthy financially “we have had difficulties with how we manage the system and that is what we have to correct. We have had difficulty with how we procure and how we manage and distribute the resources and so it is useless in my view that we have all the monies and when I go to Paramakatoi and somebody says ‘we have a shortage of drugs’ when I know we have it in abundance in Georgetown…we have to do things differently,” he warned.
In the final analysis, Hamilton noted that it is imperative to improve the operations of the heath sector with a view of ensuring that citizens are given value for their tax dollars when they seek to access medical care from public health facilities.
The Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister of Health are the two officials within the health sector who are mandated to ensure that health policies are implemented effectively. In this regard, Hamilton said that efforts will be made to ensure that accountability is manifested because “we are accountable in the National Assembly…we have to be accountable to the nation,” he insisted.