“Of course it can’t happen overnight, but the plan is to improve the overall health services in Anguilla – thus ensuring that we have proper services at the demand of our citizens and patients, and to identify what will be the cost of delivering those services.”
So said the Chief Executive Officer of the Health Authority of Anguilla, Mr. George Brown, while speaking to The Anguillian on Monday, October 26, about a strategic workshop on the island now spanning a period of some two weeks.
The main facilitator for the workshop is Dr. Corbin Akhentoolove, a Lecturer in Management Studies at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies.
Mr. Brown said that the strategic workshop was concerned with the goals and objectives of the Health Authority – in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. For that reason, it was arranged that members of the Health Authority Board and committees, representatives of the Ministry, Executive Managers, Middle Managers and other staff members, should be involved in the exercise.
“The aim is to ensure that it will be a combined collaborative decision at the end of the day,” Mr. Brown explained. “We will see projects emanating from this over the next three to five years, as the strategic plan for the Health Authority, and there will also be operational plans for the coming year, 2016, which will define what is expected from the Board, the CEO and Executive Managers. The goals and objectives will be measured via performance management and appraisal systems. Out of this there will also be an ethics policy which is the staff manual. All of this will be aligned ensuring that the Health Authority is strategically driven…”
Chairman of the Health Authority Board, Mr. Fritz Smith, commented: “I think the process we are going through is a welcome one because, as Chairman, I feel that there is a disconnect between the Ministry, the Health Authority Corporate Body and the Health professionals. Everybody should be involved in the entire process so that there is a better and clearer understanding of the working relationships going forward. The plan is to bring everybody together in a shared vision, and a shared goal with greater efficiency in the delivery of our health services.”
Mr. Evans McNiel Rogers, Minister of Social Development and Health, had this to say: “Basically, over the years we have had the Health Authority and the Ministry of Health. Over the last six years or so there was not any real close collaboration between them. It seemed as though there were two separate entities. What we are doing is having a number of workshops –not only to encourage and find to a strategic way forward to bring both entities together – but also to deal with matters like customer service, staff morale, staff responsibilities and setting up standard operating procedures whereby all of us address, approach and deal with certain things the same way. What this does is strengthen the entire organisation with one overall goal: to provide optimum care for the people of Anguilla.
Minister Rogers added: “The plan looks at projects in health, the policies we have and the strategies we are looking at. The ministry will be much more involved and I intend to be intimately involved as it relates to the implementation of health in Anguilla.”
