Spanish Town Hospital – Upgrading And Expanding For Improved Service Delivery

The Management and staff of the Spanish Town Hospital, which is the largest Type B facility in the country, are anxiously awaiting the extensive infrastructure upgrades that are to come to the 70-year-old institution.

The hospital is to benefit from the largest infrastructure upgrade under the Government’s Health Systems Strengthening Programme for Public Health Facilities.

The upgrade will see the facility moving from a Type B to a Type A Regional Hospital, serving as a final referral point for other public hospitals.

Type B facilities provide primary and secondary health care while Type A Hospitals provide comprehensive secondary and tertiary health care services and are referral centres for hospitals in the public and private healthcare systems.

The Spanish Town Hospital, built in 1952 with a capacity of just over 200 beds, now has an expanded capacity of approximately 430.

The proposed new building encompasses the construction of a six-storey modern facility with an estimated area of 17,633.68 sq. m.

It will include several points of access for staff and patients, a basement (car park and access) and a skywalk to link the existing wards.

During his contribution to the Sectoral Debate for the 2022/2023 Fiscal Year in May, the Minister of Health and Wellness Hon. Christopher Tufton, announced that the tender process for the Spanish Town Hospital would soon begin and that based on Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) procurement procedures, a contractor should be engaged by the end of the calendar year and that work should commence early in 2023.

Senior Medical Officer (SMO) of the Hospital, Dr. Jacqueline Wright-James, says the staff “is very excited about the expansion plan. They are excited with the infrastructure, with the design, and with the increase in services that will come because of this redevelopment”.

She explains that over the 70 years of the institution’s history, the hospital would have grown from offering four services to the current 21. The redevelopment will see even more services being added to meet new and growing demands. These include urology, oncology, cardiology, ophthalmology, and psychiatry.

The SMO welcomes the upgrades and highlights the fact that although the hospital would have had infrastructural changes over the years, they would not have been enough to keep pace with the increase in population in the parish over the last seven decades.

Included in the upgrades are six additional operating theatres, which the SMO says will significantly boost the number of surgeries being done and reduce waiting time.

“The population is aging and therefore we will have more patients who will seek care because of complications from non-communicable diseases. The addition of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and High Dependency Units (HDUs) will also make a big contribution to our ability to manage our cases,” the SMO adds.

The development will also include a new pharmacy, a new laboratory and a new radiology centre.

“We will now be able to do CT (Computerized Tomography) scans, MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and mammograms and as you know radiology is an important part of management so we will now be able to access imaging for our patients in a timely manner,” the SMO elaborates.

She also points out that the new facility promises to be more aesthetically pleasing. The expansion is more vertical than horizontal which will mean maintenance of green spaces which is crucial for patient and staff morale.

The expansion is a part of the thrust of the Ministry of Health and Wellness towards building out the country’s health infrastructure to maximise service delivery. This is being done as the Government of Jamaica makes the most significant investment in health infrastructure since independence in 1962.