Dear Sir,

I am deeply concerned about some of the comments that have been posted on The Royal Gazette website since the public release of my letter of concern during interviews yesterday.

One of the major reasons that I tried to work confidentially “behind the scenes” with the hospital and the Ministry of Health to address the ED boarding crisis was that I feared this issue would be politicised — as, unfortunately, so often occurs in this country when it comes to matters related to education or healthcare.

True to form, supporters of the political Opposition have used this platform to attack the Government on a variety of topics such as Caricom — even making personal attacks on sitting ministers. These are unrelated issues that distract from the task at hand.

This is not helpful — and only diverts energies — that should be combined in unison by both political parties to address a healthcare crisis that places the wellbeing of everyone resident on these islands at risk.

I want to make it perfectly clear that the Ministry of Health and minister Wilson in particular — as well as the Government in general — have done absolutely everything that I have requested to bring a resolution to this crisis. Had the Bermuda Hospitals Board acted in equally good faith, I would never have gone public with my concerns, because it was my sincere wish to entirely avoid the associated negative publicity that I knew would occur.

While there have been major missteps by both organisations to get us into the situation that we now must deal with, I hold the Bermuda Hospitals Board alone to be fully responsible for not acting responsibly over the past three months by putting simple measures in place to address this crisis, and, even worse, by deliberately misleading the Bermudian public about the safety and quality of care that is being delivered in the Emergency Department at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

We can’t undo the flawed design of the Acute Care Wing, the failure by multiple governments to prepare for the quite predictable impact of our ageing population on our ability to provide high-quality medical care in Bermuda in the 21st century, or the many poor decisions that have been made by politicians or hospital administrators that have got us to where we are now.

What we can do — and what we must do as a unified community undeterred by political divisions — is to demand better access to emergency care in this country, and hold accountable from this point forward anyone or any organisation that might impede us from attaining that goal.

Reliving the past achieves nothing except to explain how we got here. What really counts is that we collectively do the right things moving forward.

EDWARD SCHULTZ

Former Chief of Emergency Services

King Edward VII Memorial Hospital