Customer service, a public health priority - Tufton

According to the minister, who was addressing the diaspora in Florida on Wednesday attention to improved customer service is one of the essential elements of “Empowering Communities to Combat Non-Communicable Diseases” – the focus of his talk, which was delivered at the Island Space Caribbean Museum as part of The Consul General Oliver Mair’s Distinguished Lecture Series.

“Oftentimes when the complaints come, it is because somebody never talked to patients or persons want to hear something about their relative and [they don’t get that chance],” he said.

“It is a message that we have to get across: that therapy is very much embedded in the customer service experience – not just the doctor or the prescription. We really have to work at that,” the minister added.

This, Dr. Tufton noted, is in addition to the need for the careful management of resources.

“More often than not, I have determined, the problem is not so much a resource problem as it is a management problem. It is how we allocate the resources when have to create optimal benefits to whether the external stakeholder or the internal stakeholder,” he said.

The minister also used the opportunity of the healthcare dialogue to bring diaspora members up to date on other efforts to ensure health for all, at all ages.

These efforts, he noted, include continuing the dialogue with private sector stakeholders on the introduction of front-of-package labelling; and the schools nutrition policy, which is being progressed to help to create a culture of better food choices among Jamaicans – some 77 per cent of whom died because of NCDs such as hypertension and diabetes in 2020.

“From a behavioural standpoint, it is understandable why if you start with the kids, you are likely to develop better habits – habits that are likely to become permanent over time,” he said.

These efforts are complemented by programmes such as the ongoing Jamaica Moves, which has its focus on the promotion of movement, health checks and nutrition in schools, communities and workplaces; Know Your Numbers, which promotes screening; and New Limb, New Life, which helps to make prostheses more affordable for persons.