CONSULTANTS at the Hospital have hit back at “erroneous” and “defamatory” comments made this week about the state of healthcare in Jersey and sought to reassure Islanders that services are safe.
Dr Ajay Kumar told the JEP that he was speaking on behalf of colleagues when he said that hospital staff were “distressed”, “furious” and “upset”, and that some were even considering leaving the department.
Separately, Patrick Armstrong, the Hospital’s medical director and a consultant surgeon, told the JEP that the “vast majority of staff” were “hard-working, dedicated individuals” doing their “very best to provide great clinical care in what are quite trying circumstances”.
On Tuesday, three former senior officials of HCS gave damning assessments of the healthcare system in a series of Scrutiny hearings.
Professor Simon Mackenzie, who came to the Island in January 2023 as the clinical lead in a five-person “change team”, and Tom Hayhoe, who chaired the department’s advisory board for five weeks, painted a picture of a broken system resistant to change.
Both said that if they were Jersey residents, they would seek healthcare away from the Island.
They argued that Health needed to fundamentally “redesign” itself, either by becoming an arm’s-length organisation, or latching itself fully to a facility in England.
Dr Kumar, a UK-trained consultant who retired three months ago after 23 years in Jersey, said that outsourcing services would come at a huge cost and inconvenience to the Jersey taxpayer, and claimed that healthcare in the Island was better than in the UK.
“The UK mainland can barely cope with health issues in its own population and has huge waiting lists,” he said.
“I am proud of the quality of care that I have observed, which has been as good as any offered in teaching hospitals I’ve worked at in the UK. The staff at the Hospital are committed to delivering the best possible care. There is no doubt that we are outperforming the NHS.”
He said: “The most important element of care is trust. The reputational damage that’s been done to HCS does not promote confidence in the staff or in the Island population. We must now restore the good name of the Island’s healthcare system, because that’s what attracted me and so many of my colleagues to the Island, and that will continue to attract the highest quality staff, now and in the future.
“If we go down the route of bashing the Hospital staff, who are trying to deliver good care, then it will cause further problems.
“Staff are really upset, and some are so fed up that they are prepared to hang up their boots, which would be a disaster because trying to replace them would be very difficult.”
Mr Armstrong took issue with Prof Mackenzie’s claim that the UK’s NICE guidelines – implemented during his time here – were not being followed.
He said that HCS’s default position as an organisation was NICE, but that if there were “better, more up-to-date guidelines that fit Jersey better”, there was an “exceptions process to allow those to be implemented”.
Mr Armstrong said he would understand, following the Scrutiny hearings, if Islanders “felt concerned about coming to the Hospital”.
He added: “While I would recognise that there are still problems and issues in HCS and there are still many improvements to be made, I would like to reassure the public that many changes have taken place and that the vast majority of staff in this hospital are hard-working, dedicated individuals who are doing their very best to provide great clinical care in what are quite trying circumstances.
“I know a lot of my consultant colleagues are very upset and the reason they are upset is not because they don’t agree that there are some problems and issues, but because it felt like every practitioner was being painted with the same brush. There are lots of my colleagues who I work with day in, day out, who really want to see change, who really want to make things better and who are doing a good job.”
