Fewer Hospital Visits In 2020

Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, has reported that provisional data indicate that in 2020 there was a decrease in hospital visits and an increase in surgical operations.

Speaking in the 2021/22 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on May 19, he noted that the data indicate that in the year 2020 there were 2,836,758 visits to public health facilities, compared to 3,306,040 in 2019.

In 2020, there were 1,835,991 visits to the health centres compared to 2,082,186 in 2019, but greater than the five-year average of 1,601,668. There were 1,000,765 visits to public hospitals, when compared to 1,223,854 a year earlier, and 1,256,295 for the five-year average.

The decrease in hospital visits was mainly due to the reduction in outpatient visits.

Total surgical operations increased in 2020 to 52,115 compared to 34,342 in 2019 and 36,348 for the five-year average.

Additionally, Jamaica had 145,232 admissions for care and assisted in the delivery of 34,259 births.

The Government also provided 289,696 diagnostic imaging services, including X-rays, CT scans and MRIs and did 8,069,052 laboratory tests.

“COVID-19 may have dominated our time and attention in the last year, but our public health system and healthcare workers stood up to the task while continuing to respond to other health challenges faced by the Jamaican people,” the Minister said.

“The team worked hard, not just on COVID but on providing general response to the population… Those reductions we try to restructure and compensate for to ensure that the Jamaican people maintained full attention. For example, we used telemedicine for continued care of patients previously seen in hospital outpatient clinics and health centres,” he added.