In a ceremony last year, the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Nutrition was officially handed over the St. Jude Hospital (Augier site). Currently, the St. Jude Hospital is in the process of full commissioning of its healthcare services. The commissioning of the hospital is basically a rigorous quality assurance activity and exercise. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Jenny Daniel speaks on the commissioning process. “This quality assurance is really to ensure that the systems that have been installed at the hospital are functioning to the best of their ability in terms of the standards and the quality of service that we would expect from the hospital. Those systems include your electrical systems, your plumbing systems, your HVAC systems and even your IT systems, which are required to run the hospital efficiently. When we speak of healthcare, we need to ensure always that quality is of utmost consideration. We need to ensure that the systems that have been put in place can help to provide the best quality health service to the public that we intend to serve. So the commissioning process allows us to go through these steps to test the various systems, to test the various pieces of equipment and validate them, and to train our staff at the St. Jude Hospital to ensure that they are fully equipped to manage those pieces of equipment in order to deliver the service that needs to be provided. So the commissioning phase, though it may seem to be a quiet phase, is extremely necessary and extremely vital to ensure that we have a fully functioning hospital providing patient care at the highest quality and to ensure that our staff feels comfortable and equipped to handle all medical cases that come into the hospital for treatment. So currently the site is actually a very busy site with a lot of activities taking place, primarily focused and centered around the installation of equipment, the testing of the equipment, the validation of this equipment, the testing of the various systems that have been installed at the hospital.”

In an effort to support the commissioning of the St. Jude Hospital, the Ministry of Health as directed by the Cabinet of Ministers has fully engaged a Consultant Health Planner Dr. Xysta Edmund to provide necessary guidance and technical expertise to assist the commissioning process and to ensure that the various components of this process such as Ministry of Health, the St. Jude Hospital, the National Steering Committee, the commissioning committees, commissioning directors, CEOs, etc., are working in tandem to ensure that the hospital, when it is open, is fully functional and can provide the service that is required. “In addition to, you know, the consultant health planner, the Ministry, of course, also provides technical support in the, you know, form of our corporate planning unit, the office of the CMO, as well as even our communications unit, in providing support to that transitioning process, commissioning