Medical records staff at May Pen Hospital protest poor conditions

Medical records staff at May Pen Hospital in Clarendon have taken industrial action.

    

They are registering only emergency cases as well as elderly patients.

    

Leon Dixon, the Hospital's CEO, told RJR News that the workers are upset because of the state of the filing room which is unable to hold the volume of records being kept there.

    

Mr. Dixon said the situation worsened when the overcrowded filing room was flooded last weekend due to an unlocked piped. 

 

Mr. Dixon said the flood, which originated in another area, seeped into the medical records room and soaked files that were being kept in boxes on the floor because of the overcrowding. 

 

The staff had to come in on Monday to dry the wet items but they have now grown increasingly frustrated with the state of the room, and this led to the strike, Mr. Dixon said. 

 

The workers have said normality will be restored when the hospital's management finds additional space for storing medical records.

 

According to Mr. Dixon, the hospital is working on a solution to address the problem.

 

"There are some containers that we are retrofitting. We are trying to fast-track that so that we can get that complete by the end of the month or some time early September... So we're trying to find some area where we can put some of those files out of the walkway so they can easily retrieve files on the shelves," he pointed out.