A former Manx Care employee is calling for the health body’s contract to be ‘looked at’ saying ‘failings’ need to be addressed to ensure better patient care.
Kevin Oliphant-Smith has started the ‘Save Our Health Services’ Facebook page and a petition ‘demanding’ the resignation of the chief executive.
Manx Care says its leadership team continues to ‘go above and beyond’ each day and it's proud of its achievements but is 'aware of the work that still needs to be done'.
Mr Oliphant-Smith spoke to Chanelle Sukhoo:
Hi I'm Chanel, one of the journalists at Meng's Radio. Welcome to the latest edition of Meng's Radio Newscast. My name is Kevin Elephant Smith. Right and you've created a petition that you, while you've launched a petition, can you tell me about it? Yes, so basically I launched a petition which I published on her Facebook page. I've created a Facebook page as well called Save Our Health Services, Isle of Man. And this was more just to, I think, start the conversation. I wanted to highlight the problems and issues because I feel like people generally are all talking about the same thing. I come across so many people on a day-to-day basis including MHK's who completely agree with me, but no one seems to be doing anything about it. So this was me saying, well you know what, I'm going to make a start, I'm going to raise this subject publicly and get the ball rolling really. Right now before we go into the traction that the petition has gotten, you mentioned some of the problems and the issues that you've picked up over the years from people that you've spoken to. What are some of those problems and issues? I mean of course the big one from a, I mean there's two sides of this, there's the patience side and then of course staffing side. So as a patient, of course it's the waiting list are huge. I think going to A&E has become normal now for people because they can't see a GP. So A&E is getting full of people who ordinarily years gone by would have gone and seen their GP. But then equally the care that people are getting in A&E is also a lot more substantive to the way it would have been years ago and that's due to staffing levels too. Right so that's the from the patient side. Do you have the side of maybe employees? I know you were a former Mankzk or Nobles employee, right? Yeah so I've got quite a long history with Nobles Hospital so I'm actually the third generation of my family who worked at Nobles so my mother worked at Nobles for 25 years and my grandmother worked at Nobles for 60 years and so I've always had a great relationship with staff at the hospital and you know I've got a lot of friends that work there and they talk to me on a regular basis about the issues that they feel are going on at Nobles Hospital and it's become a lot more obvious now. Not only can they not get the staff recruitment but they're not able to retain the staff under Mankzk and what they're having to do now is recruit nursing staff from other countries to come and work here and there's two sides of that. In one way we're very fortunate that people from other countries do want to come and work here and give us their skills but you have to ask the question why don't people locally want to work at Nobles Hospital? Why do they not want to be in that profession anymore? Now would you be able to answer that question that why? Yeah I can. So of course they may change it to the contracts I think a couple of years ago now the pension structure and the staff morale at Nobles Hospital is very low and it's a very stressful place to work it's not you know you go there and you speak to nurses and they're very very stressed and I think sometimes patients can get the wrong idea they can think all that particular nurse isn't very nice to me but it's not that at all it's just that those nurses are so hard worked and they really do give everything they've got and sometimes you know they don't get breaks and they're doing the work of three people in some cases and the money isn't very good at all so you know what a nurse who has gone through a degree choose to work in a job that's highly stressful long hours not very good pay or would they choose to find another career that they can get paid more money and have more work life balance. Right now so these are all very interesting stuff that you're raising before you put it or took it to the petition phase seeing that you have had a relationship with Nobles and you know third generation from your family that worked at the hospital did you perhaps try to reach out to some of the seniors to echo some of your concerns? Yeah so that's an interesting story actually because it was after Teresa Koch came on one of your shows and she was talking about the problems at the hospital and things like that and I commented on one of the Facebook posts on the Manks radio page and basically said I don't agree with this at all and I was very surprised that Teresa Koch contacted me based on that comment on Facebook and offered to meet with me she said well okay come in and talk with me and I thought wow okay she's given me a chance to talk and listen to me and maybe I've got this wrong so I prepared some notes and I went and met with her at the hospital and but straight away I was kind of caught off guard because I was led to believe I was meeting with her on a more casual basis to have a chat and when I got there there was Teresa Koch and I know that I think was the director of nursing that was with her and a gentleman and it very much felt like an ambush I was asking Mrs. Koch questions she couldn't answer them without asking her colleague the answers she didn't seem to have a grasp on what was going on and I raised some other concerns that I witnessed myself personally when I was working there and Teresa Koch did say to me did you ever officially put this in as a complaint and I told her I said no because it doesn't work your complaint system doesn't work I'm not going to waste my time so she urged me to do a complaint which I did with her in her office and she took those details and promised to get back to me and never did and the complaint never got looked into I tried to contact her after that meeting because she did promise to meet with me again and she ignored me she ignored my emails she ignored my letters and so that was just a little insight that I could feel on that particular occasion as to what the staff have to suffer with being ignored within that complaints and things like that now that incident you know did that kind of make you lose faith in her as the CEO um not straight away um I did try my best to um you know I thought to myself she's the CEO she's a busy lady maybe she hasn't got my email so I really did try to make as many excuses for her myself um I contacted her secretary they even confirmed to me that the emails were received um so there's unfortunately no excuse at all and as someone who previously did work there and raised a complaint as a ex-employee to know that that matter wasn't looked into a due diligence again what does that say about the organization looking after its staff right and in your petition I know you also calling for Theresa to hand in her resignation um can you tell me a little bit about that and how's how how's the um how's the reaction been uh or the following been to your petition and so I'll be honest with you I'm a little bit surprised at the reaction I have had because I expected a bit more of a backlash from people and you know unfortunately and I've tried my best to avoid this but some people see it as an attack on our NHS and attack on our health services which isn't the case at all I'm not saying anything bad about our health staff at all it's it's the management it's the policies and you know this isn't just towards better patient care this is towards the staff being looked after and supported within their role as well um and at the end of the day you know nobody's hospital our health services on the island man we all need that it doesn't matter what job we do how much money we have we have one hospital here or one main hospital excluding Ramsey Cottage and no matter what who you are we have to go there in an emergency so I'm not looking at this just from my point of view I'm looking at this you know for all the residents of the island man which we all deserve better than what we currently have now also the tax has been raised this year to 22 percent apparently to cover health care to fund the health care so I would be more interested to know how that budget is being handled by mains care as well because if us the residents are now having to part with more of our money to fund a health service that's being ran poorly then what's happening to our money and from some of the people that you've interacted with that may have come across the petition what's the what's the feedback that you're sort of getting or what's the feeling like on the ground um a lot of people are kind of almost coming up and patting me on the back because there's an awful lot of people who agree with me but are scared to speak out um because unfortunately we know on the island man how people are treated when they speak out um you know that they're fit in fear of losing their position and you know not being able to get a job in the future not being promoted etc and and you know so many people say to me on a daily basis that they can't believe I'm brave enough to speak out and kind of they were there I've been warned several times that I shouldn't actually um because I won't be able to get a job or whatever it might be but um I think if that's the way people think nothing will ever change so it just takes one person to make a start and hopefully other people will recognize that this is something worthwhile fighting for our health services because the way things are going we're going down a slippery road to privatization as you said earlier you know nobles is your only hospital or your main you know your main facility on the island for people to seek health care how do you feel you know when you see those headlines those negative headlines those long waiting lists those um articles about people you know waiting patients and their stories of what they go through because as you said you know it is the only or the main place that people would go to for treatment I think it's very sad I think it's very very upsetting to hear that so many people on our island are struggling with medical conditions and which aren't being addressed because of the huge waiting lists so you've got many patients that are on long waiting lists that are having to suffer and wait for treatment and and what you find is a lot of those patients will be recurrent patients going to a&a for help because they can't get the help from the GP because the GP can only do so much they can't see a consultant because the waiting lists are in some cases years so these poor patients are they've got no option they just keep going to a&a every week maybe getting them pain relief or whatever it might be and then they're they're showing the door again and told you've got to wait until you get an appointment from the consultant and and it's no wonder we have a huge rise in the island man of depression unfortunately suicide is another big one here I mean if you tell someone you can't work you can't earn money go home and be in pain for some time years until a consultant can see you what do they think is going to happen to that person has anyone from manx care um try to reach out to you or speak to you since you launched the facebook page or the petition no no and I wouldn't expect them to because it's what we've come to learn with manx care and there's lots of things they've done which are very much PR stunts so for example emkels and I was talking to someone actually within manx care recently who agreed with me the emkels is just a complete PR stunt it's it's um you know you can call them and you can give them a complaint but nothing will happen with that complaint it's the illusion that someone is taking your complaints seriously and in terms of your petition how many signatures would you like to get and what would you do or would you be handing over that petition and the results to maybe the DHSCE or to the health minister or what would you or what are you planning to do with that petition well you know once you close it I mean the petition is just one thing really it's just another tool in the arsenal and I've not really even promoted it much to be honest and you know I've been speaking with mhks as well so there is an email which I did put on the facebook page for people to read which I sent to the chief minister and all mhks and I think that was back in may and it was very sad to see that only four mhks responded to me on such an important topic for mhks responded um you know we we elect those people to represent us and if you look at even the last 12 months we've had people going out and demonstrating in the street um on different matters which affect smaller groups of the community this particular subject affects all of us so I don't know why someone hasn't done something about it before quite frankly now from your conversations with the mhks I understand you know a lot of it may be sensitive information but what's the feeling that you're getting from those conversations with them and so the ones that have been speaking to me I was very surprised to hear that they completely agree with me and they've agreed that the mhks care contract needs looking at again they don't feel like it's working and they think that mhks care have had long enough now to prove they're worse and to turn things around or at least make some headway and all we've seen from mhks care is the masking for more money and every year more money more money and bringing in private companies I mean though I met with some of those private surgeons and nurses that came over to help reduce the waiting lists they were getting paid a huge amount of money compared to our own nurses they were having their hotels paid for their meals paid for their taxis paid for so is this really good use of our money taxpayers money I'm starting to wonder do we need to have this 2% tax increase or is this or are we paying for mhks care mistakes what would you like to see being done I really think that the mhks care contract needs looking at again I don't think the right people are in in management at the moment I think the people that are in charge of mhks care don't have the experience to be able to run a health service so I think you know go back to basics find some people who have been working in nobles hospital on the ground floor people who've rolled their sleeves up for years nurses who know exactly what needs to be done put them in those positions put them in the management positions and we don't need so many managers they've got so many managers they're such a small hospital it's ridiculous and they're all getting paid a lot more you could get like four nurses for the price of one of these managers it's ridiculous um I think from my side I think I've got everything that I need is there anything that you'd like to add that you'd like to raise um anything that I perhaps didn't ask that you'd like to chat about I mean I think just going back to your question about what I would like to see I think they need to they're looking at the wrong bits really so they're focusing the funding on nelts hospital and I think they need to look at primary care as well so I think there needs to be more funding into GP services GP services should be able to offer more from their surgeries and then build it up from there because that will reduce the need for people to attend A&E for example um so let's not wait until people are at a critical stage where they need emergency care let's try and address the medical problems before they turn into emergencies that's that's what I would say mains radio has offered an interview to mains care to address some of the concerns of mr olef and smith mains care has however declined the opportunity for an interview and instead sent a statement it reads over the last three years the board of mains care has sought to be as open and transparent as possible about the challenges we face our successes and the continuing issues that mean we are not yet able to deliver the best small island integrated health and social care system in the world which is our committed aspiration mains care ceo and chair appeared before the public accounts committee in june 2024 to give an account of mains care's position to date the condition of the health and social care system we inherited the challenges we faced as well as our efforts and achievements in addition in february the board met with the council of ministers to discuss the financial challenges across the isle of man including those in health and social care we are proud of our achievements and aware of the work that still needs to be done we do not get everything right but we do not have control over all aspects of our work which is challenging for us we have strong relationships with the department of health and social care and value their support and challenge to enable us to improve we have a strong and robust leadership team our non-executives have deep experience in health social care business and the isle of man as to our executive team who continue to go above and beyond in their roles every day thank you for making it to the end of the manks ready in newscast you are obviously someone with exquisite taste may i politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of manks ready a podcast that your favorite podcast provider so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone thank you [BLANK_AUDIO]
