The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

SENIOR doctors in the public healthcare system could take a strike vote within the next week, the head of their bargaining institution said yesterday.

"We're going to have an urgent call meeting next week and that strike poll may be called as early as the end part of next week, the first week of October," said Dr Locksley Munroe, head of the Consultant Physicians Staff Association, during a press conference.

"There is a possibility that step will be taken within the next week or so."

Among the steps doctors could take to protest their concerns include withdrawing their services or demonstrating, which "can happen in a kind of ad-hoc matter," he said.

"You can go off on long lunch breaks or something to that effect; you can take a strike poll and then have the legal authority to go on a strike or withdraw services."

"There won't be any illegal things, I can tell you that flat-out."

The CPSA has been trying to secure an industrial agreement from the PHA for several years. It hopes the agreement would allow senior doctors to get an increase in their benefits.

Negotiations between the CPSA and the PHA appear to have broken down, however, with Dr Munroe saying: "Despite what ought to be a civil, polite, respectful process, since the 16th of July, the PHA has not made any formal contacts with us to forward this negotiation process. They have not had the respect, the decency, to make contact with any of us to indicate that they are willing to come back to the table and that is a total lack of respect for persons like ourselves.

"To date, we have not received a counter-proposal to the document we submitted initially in January of 2016. A fundamental aspect of any negotiation process is you submit a proposal, a counterproposal is produced by the other side and you sit and negotiate a reasonable, amicable resolution to what that proposal is."

While the PHA last week said it does not have the funding to pay doctors more money, Dr Munroe said yesterday the PHA has ignored doctors advice about how it could raise critical revenue.

"The PHA is a quasi-government organisation similar to BEC, the WSC and when they are facing challenges, their boards, their managers, their directors, create ways to get funding," he said.

"They still require subventions from the government but their boards, they have to be innovate to improve their revenue capture to make their organisations sustainable. I cannot say that PHA has done that. I don't know if the government has given them that mandate to raise funds. The government as well as PHA needs to figure out, just like BPL, WSC, just like BahamasAir, how will you raise the funds to meet standards needed to be met. There are revenues being lost in this organisation and we have made suggestions and there are records from 2014 where we have forwarded our positions on how you might improve revenue capture in this organisation."

Elaborating on steps the PHA could take to raise revenue, Dr Munroe said: "From the department of surgery, there are a significant number of industrial accidents that take place, persons get injured on their jobs, they fall off roofs and so forth; those persons are supposed to be covered under national insurance and the business office has the authority to bill NIB for such patients. Again, road traffic accidents, which we see a lot of, many of those persons have their insurance.

"Again those potential sources of revenue are not accessed significantly in this organisation. There is a huge deficit and I know for a fact they are trying to close that gap in terms of the skillset of their business office, with coding of diseases and accidents, to be able to send a valid statement to an insurance company. There are many areas where revenue is being lost.

"Persons asking for legal reports; there's a statement; that is usually paid for. The department of anaethesia and surgery actually proposed to the former board members to put in place a pilot project to assist with this sort of thing. That was in 2014, this is 2018. Again, those proposals, those suggestions have fallen off deaf ears. We are more than aware of how they can be done."