First ‘Hospitals week’ initiative since 1983
Throughout this week, Bermuda Hospitals Board has been handing out data and information about the services it provides, how it operates and how well it performs.
“Know Your BHB!”, running in the lobbies of the new Acute Care Wing and General Wing of King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, has given facts and figures to give an insight into the volume and variety of work needed to keep Bermuda’s only hospitals running.
It is the first “Hospitals Week” initiative since 1983.
Board CEO Venetta Symonds said: “Not many people will think about how much work this department has to do in order to keep front line care services stocked with all the linen needed.
“Trust has to be built through transparency and accountability, and also a better understanding of what it takes to run the hospitals and how we are performing.
“People may not realise that BHB revenue has declined over the last two years.
“There is a lot of concern that BHB pushes up the cost of premiums and healthcare on the island, but BHB has successfully reduced its impact on costs for the last two years.
“We hope that will raise informed questions about how our community health and utilisation impact costs. The data we are sharing about disease prevalence on our inpatient cards very clearly demonstrates the impact of high diabetes rates on hospitalisation.
“And while we absolutely appreciate that the hospitals do cost a lot to run, we hope the data will provide evidence of the volume of our operations.
“We provide tens of thousands of different types of treatments, undertake over three million lab tests, and thousands of diagnostic tests both at home and as outpatients.
“We will continue to regularly report on the information we are sharing this week.
“The more people know about how we operate our volumes and our performance data the better they can judge the quality of our services.”
Rising healthcare costs are not being driven by the Bermuda Hospitals Board, which has seen its revenues tumble in the past two years.
The assertion came from BHB with the commencement of Hospitals Week, in which the board put some of its key statistics on display.
BHB reported a revenue peak of $326.3 million in the 2012-13 fiscal year, dropping to $312.6 for the subsequent year and $299.6 million for 2014-15.
In another striking figure, in light of the media attention garnered by dog attacks, cases of bites have in fact declined year over year.
There were 102 cases reported last year, against 112 for 2013, 118 for 2012, 145 for 2011 and 173 in 2010: 666 in total over five years — seven of which involved tourists.
The statistics also show the cost inflicted by traffic accidents: almost $17 million was spent in five years for emergency and urgent care for accident patients, at a yearly average of $2.8 million — $1,500 per patient.
Inpatient care for road traffic accident patients added up to $20 million over the last five years, or $16,000 per patient.
