Nine months after taking control of the North Central Regional Health Authority (NCRHA), the institution’s new board has released a public statement defending its corrective cost-cutting agenda, while acknowledging it inherited a deeply broken healthcare system riddled with fiscal mismanagement and dangerous operational failures from the prior administration. In a statement issued Saturday, the board outlined the depth of the crisis it inherited, detailing hundreds of millions of dollars in unaccounted spending, unpaid vendor debts, and widespread infrastructure and equipment breakdowns that left patient care severely compromised.\n\nAmong the most damaging findings uncovered by the new board were hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to service providers made without competitive tender or formal contracts: over $124 million paid to a single janitorial firm across two years, and roughly $250 million disbursed to security companies over a decade, all through no-bid arrangements. When the new leadership took office in August 2025, it found more than $350 million in outstanding payments owed to more than 300 suppliers, leading dozens of vendors to suspend critical services. Annual overtime pay topped $98 million with no accountability for productivity or output.\n\nBeyond the fiscal chaos, the board reported systemic operational failures that directly harmed patients across its regional facilities. These included months-long waits for elective surgeries, massive backlogs for diagnostic procedures, extended wait times for CT and MRI scans, and hours-long delays for outpatient clinic appointments. Accident and Emergency departments operated below acceptable safety standards, with broken elevators, non-functional standby generators, failed climate control systems, and out-of-service critical imaging equipment including MRIs, CT scanners and X-ray machines. Many facilities also faced widespread electrical and structural deficiencies that disrupted daily care.\n\nThrough aggressive cost-cutting measures and stricter fiscal oversight, the board says it has now freed up financial capacity to reverse these deficiencies and expand access to care. Planned and implemented improvements include adding Saturday operating sessions, extending weekday operating room hours to 6 p.m., offering overtime for diagnostic imaging staff, adding nursing capacity to speed up patient throughput, and implementing a $75 incentive rate for registered nurses working extra shifts, alongside overtime pay for other frontline clinical staff. The authority has prioritized expanding access to high-priority procedures including cancer surgeries, cardiac operations, and acute stroke care, while working to cut the inherited backlog of delayed and canceled procedures that have disrupted care for thousands of patients and their families.\n\nThe board stressed its commitment to ending unnecessary surgical delays and making wait times reasonable for all patients seeking care, and publicly recognized the sacrifice of nurses who have voluntarily worked extended shifts to maintain care continuity amid staffing shortages. It noted that 50 additional nurses have been interviewed and hired in the past two months to improve staffing ratios and patient experience, and categorically rejected external claims that patient outcomes have worsened under its leadership.\n\nEarly outcome data released by the NCRHA shows measurable progress between January 2026 and April 2026: monthly mortality figures dropped from 275 to 206, surgical volumes have increased, wait times for A&E patients waiting for ward admission have been cut, facility cleanliness and working conditions have improved, and nurse absenteeism fell slightly from 20% to 18%. The board concluded that in just nine months, it has addressed many long-standing systemic issues, restored fiscal stability, and positioned the NCRHA to continue expanding services across the region.\n\nBut the response from the Trinidad and Tobago National Nursing Association (TTNNA) has been sharply critical, with association president Idi Stuart dismissing the NCRHA’s claims as self-serving “worthless words.” Stuart argued that the new board’s nine-month tenure has been marked by constant upheaval and chaos across NCRHA facilities, and renewed the association’s long-standing call for an independent Health Sector Accreditation Council to verify institutional performance claims. For more than 20 to 30 years, the association has pushed for this independent body to conduct unbiased evaluations of public and private healthcare facilities, so the public can have accurate information about actual conditions, rather than relying on self-reported claims from the institutions themselves.\n\nStuart also called out inconsistencies in the NCRHA’s nursing hiring claims, noting the reported number of new hires changes with every press release, and questioned how many nurses have actually been added to facility rosters. He argued that even the 50 new hires cited by the NCRHA is negligible, given the authority currently faces a shortage of more than 400 full-time nursing positions, leaving many facilities operating at only 50% of required staffing levels. Stuart added that a number of the newly hired nurses have already left the NCRHA for better opportunities, worsening the shortfall.\n\nStuart also condemned the board’s reintroduction of the $75 incentive rate for extra nurse shifts, calling the move hypocritical and infuriating for frontline nursing staff. He recalled that the board initially cut the rate from $75 to $60 in 2025, claiming the higher rate was part of a corrupt racket and aligned with a 2023 Chief Personnel Officer memo, before reversing course and reinstating the $75 rate over a month later with no public explanation. Stuart argued the reversal itself confirms the NCRHA’s severe staffing crisis: the only reason the authority needs to offer incentives for extra shifts is that it does not have enough permanent nurses to cover A&E and ward shifts, leading to delays in patient care across the system. He also questioned whether the reinstatement of the $75 rate is permanent or just a temporary fix.\n\nThe current conflict over staffing and pay dates back to late April 2026, when the TTNNA launched an industrial action initiative requiring all nurses to care for no more than six patients per shift, aligned with international safe staffing standards. The action is intended to pressure the government to open negotiations over nursing and midwifery salaries, which have remained frozen at 2013 levels. The safe staffing initiative was launched after NCRHA chairman Dr Tim Goopeesingh accused nursing staff of exploiting the extra-duty pay system, claiming some nurses took home as much as $80,000 in extra pay over a three-month period. Stuart rejected those claims at the time, noting only one nurse had earned that amount, and argued that severe staffing shortages at the NCRHA leave nurses no choice but to work overtime to ensure adequate ward coverage for patients.