Printed: Hon. Boyce’s Full Speech from Recent Press Conference and Healthcare Meeting

Hon. Lilian Boyce’s recent address to the press and to employees of the Turks and Caicos Islands’ Health Ministry, proposing a re-vamping of the current Health Care system has stirred some heated debate on the WIV4 NEWS blog.

While WIV4 and the WIV4 NEWS Blog encourages a healthy discourse, we do not intend for the blog to be a venue for users to make personal attacks. That said, WIV4 NEWS Blog stands by the right to publish blog users’ comments and opinions in an effort to foster public participation in th news. We also accept the responsibility to edit those comments if they are considered offensive.

In continuing to cultivate a discourse between media sources, the general public and whenever possible, public officials, we have chosen to publish Hon. Lilian Boyce’s full speech, therefore allowing readers to have a full understanding of Hon. Boyce’s comments made to the press and health care workers on Thursday 21 February.

Hon. Boyce’s speech is below.

Remarks by Minister of Health and Human Services, the Hon. Dr. Lillian Boyce, at a meeting of Ministry of Health personnel at the Myrtle Rigby Clinic,
on February 21, 2008.

I wish to thank all of you from taking time out from your important duties to attend this rather important meeting.

For many reasons, all of which will be familiar to everyone here, this meeting is rather timely.

It is timely because there are a number of burning issues in the Ministry of Health that are of serious concern to me, my Government, and also the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands. I am sure that there are concerns which you may also have, and so, this forum is designed for us to ventilate these concerns and find solutions as to the way forward.
During Government’s Town Hall meeting a few weeks ago, and indeed on a daily basis, several important matters and complaints continue to be drawn to my attention.

As the Minister of Health and as the servant of the people, I have to listen to their cries, complaints and concerns and I am compelled and obligated to get to the bottom of these issues and fix them of behalf of my people and my government.

On an annual basis, the Ministry of Health receives the biggest allocation in the budget and this is done because we attach great value and importance to the health and well-being of our people.

Our people therefore have a fundamental and genuine right to demand proper health care, because it is their money that is paying for it.

Before going any further, I want the record to reflect that I appreciate the job that you in the medical field continue to do, sometimes against great odds and under some trying circumstances.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we would admit and accept that much more still needs to be done to bring our health care service and system up to the level where we know in our hearts and in our minds that it should be.

If the people who we are serving and treating are not satisfied with the quality of service they are receiving, then we have a problem on our hands. Yes, of course, there will always be some people who you can never please, but when there is such a loud chorus of complaints coming from the public, we have to wake up and shake up.

And so, I come here today to make it abundantly clear that it cannot, and will not, be business as usual in this ministry.

With the greatest of respect to all of you, I am going to hold each and every person in this ministry to some very high standards, because that is the only way I know things should be done if we are going to achieve the kind of excellent results that we should be aiming for.

I want things to be done the proper and professional way. The Ministry of Health is too important an area for any unprofessionalism, tardiness, or slackness to be encouraged or tolerated.
I am therefore sending a strong message to the people of this country and to those in the medical fraternity, that there will be a serious shake up in this Ministry.

If there are problems with the ambulances and emergency personnel, they will be fixed. If there are problems with the pharmacies, they will be fixed. If there are problems with the nurses and doctors, they will be fixed. If there are problems with any members of staff, with the way things are being managed, they will be fixed.

We have some new ambulances on the way for Providenciales and Grand Turk and we are in the process of having a modern Emergency Response System. In addition, I am about to introduce some customer service training for medical staff.

And I am also looking at plans on how best we can strengthen the health care delivery system, but these will be announced at a later stage.

All of us have to change our attitudes and the way we do business and the way we treat people in the health care system. And if the people don’t change, I will change the people.

Government has already started construction of two brand new hospitals in Grand Turk and Providenciales, but we cannot wait until those hospitals are completed before we start to change our attitudes. It will be like putting new wine in old bottles. A health care system is only as good as the people who are in it. So if we have new hospitals but we carry over the same old attitudes that are frustrating the public and frustrating the system, we will be taking one step forward and three steps backward.

We therefore have to put ourselves in the position of people who we are serving.
Would we want to be involved in an accident and have to wait hours for an ambulance to show up?
Would we want to go to a pharmacy early one morning before we go to work, only to discover that it is not open on time, or that we are told to come back over and over again, or that we are given the wrong drugs, or drugs that have expired, or that we are treated with disrespect?
Would we want to be admitted to the clinic or hospital and be treated with no compassion and no decency, or as if we are less than a human being.

In charting a way forward for this ministry, we must put egos aside. We must put personality clashes and political differences aside. We must put callous attitudes aside.
The Health Care system in the Turks and Caicos Islands is bigger than any one individual or set of individuals.

As I said earlier, we must all aspire to excellence in what we do because our people deserve nothing less.

Government’s manifesto clearly spells out where we want to take our health care system and I will urge all of you to get a copy so you can see the vision and share it. We need you to help us get there, but you must be committed to excellence.

Thank you and I now invite your comments.