By Serah Aupong – EM TV News, Port Moresby
With a six month old board in place and an Acting CEO who assumed office one month ago, the Eastern Highlands Provincial Hospital is keen to put the past behind them.
The man appointed as Acting CEO, Joshua Soso, spoke to EMTV News about his plans to revive vital services in the hospital.
The top priority for the new Acting CEO is to ensure systems and processes are back in place following a recent impasse that has plagued the provincial hospital.
“We want to look at the negative situation and make sure that we convert that into quantitative analysis using admission, cure rates and death rates as the basis of our benchmark,” he said.
Soso added that once they have their figures, they plan to unfold a roadmap, which will ensure minimum efficiency of services. After that is achieved, the hospital will once again look at reviving support to rural areas.
However for now, savings need to be made to fix priority areas.
“So in terms of management, I cut overhead costs including duty travel, impounding of vehicle so that we use that savings to do major renovations. So in the curative, we’d like to start from the accident and emergency all the way up to the theater and to all the four wards that we have.”
A standoff between the management and staff of the hospital, which began in 2014, exasperated an already declining service.
Since the inception of a new board in July last year headed by former Governor Mal Smith, Soso said they are committed to the roadmap, to ensure efficient service delivery is restored to the people of Eastern Highlands.
“We are taking those interventions so that there is a minimum level of efficiency and ensuring that the issues that caused the impasses are addressed properly going down to the roots so that they don’t recur,” Soso said.
