INTERMEDIATE AND LONG TERM PLAN
Recently,the most frequently asked question is” What is Hopital Sacre Coeur’s plan for the future”. The answer is becoming more obvious as we enter month 3 since the earthquake. Another common question is what are our specific needs in terms of supplies and volunteers each week. Usually, people who ask this question want very specific details.
We have been blessed with volunteers who have been shipping supplies, organizing supplies, tracking supplies and making lists of our needs each week. This is a very time consuming task and has been coordinated by a very special volunteer, Deb Motyl. Each week she updates our list of needs and sends it out to volunteers and everyone else who is trying to help fill our needs. It is an awesome task and she does it without complaint and still fulfills the duties of her primary occupation.
Our need for volunteers continues to be in the 30 to 40 a week range. The reason is that we still have 250 to 300 patients and a Haitian staff that can only care for 70 patients. This need has been met by the unbelievable network of volunteers that have been recruiting friends and the publicity we have received since the earthquake. However it is a long process from receiving a request from a volunteer to actually screening the volunteer and arranging a time for them to come and coordinating travel arrangements. This task has been coordinated by staff, Denise Kelly, and volunteers and also is very time consuming. Our needs for volunteers consist of 15 to 20 nurses, 3 to 5 primary care physicians, 2 to 3 pediatricians, 3 orthopedic surgeons, 2 anesthesiologists, 1 general surgeon and 3 Physical therapists each week.
So what is our intermediate and long term plan? Our intermediate plan is to decrease our patient population to around 100 to 120. We thought that we would be able to accomplish this in 2 to 3 months but now realize that it will take closer to 6 to 7 months. The reason for the delay is finding placement for the patients. As long as we have a census of around 200 to 300 our overhead increases by at least 40%. We also have the added burden of feeding patients and families that I mentioned in my last update.
We will be building 2 new delivery rooms and an OR for maternity. That will leave us with 3 ORs for all other surgery. We are purchasing land next to the hospital so we can build a new outpatient clinic area that will help us care for the 60,000 outpatients seen each year. Once that is built we will be able to use existing space to increase our inpatient beds.
As we increase our inpatient beds we also need to increase our staff. That means recruiting from other parts of the country so we need to build housing for the increased staff. We also are implementing a training program for nurses and nurse practitioners that will help us fill our need.
The main focus for the board in developing this plan is to make sure that we will be able to finance the hospital so it will continue to provide care and training for another 25 years. We are acutely aware of the role that we are playing in Haiti as a referral center and also as a model for how medical care can be provided by Haitian medical personnel in partnership with non-Haitian medical volunteers. We are proud that we have a prototype that can be implemented throughout Haiti. Thank you again for all your support and prayers.
Peter Kelly, MD
President
