Deputy Carina Alves said she had been made aware of a case in which the person spent three weeks in hospital in Europe before being given the all clear to return to Jersey.
However, she told the States that because there were no beds at the Hospital the person was unable to return home and was instead transferred to the UK.
‘Members of the public are concerned that a new hospital is being proposed with fewer beds when incidents like this are occurring,’ she said.
Health Minister Richard Renouf said he was aware of one case, not necessarily the one highlighted by the Deputy, where there had been an issue with private medical insurance which had meant a patient staying in a UK hospital rather than returning to Jersey.
He said he was not aware of any recent bed shortages, with beds at the Hospital currently 75-80% full.
However, the minister did echo what was said last week at a Scrutiny hearing that Health’s existing record-keeping systems were not good enough and needed improving.
He said no logs were kept of when operations were cancelled because of bed shortages because such an occurrence was ‘exceptional’ and ‘rare’. And he said no records were kept for cases when patients could not be repatriated as soon as possible to Jersey because of a lack of beds. Improvements to the way such information is recorded, however, were currently being made, he said.
Deputy Renouf also stressed that sometimes patients required isolation when returning to Jersey or specialist beds in intensive care or the specialist care baby unit, which may not always be available.
Meanwhile, the minister once again admitted that waiting lists published online for Hospital clinics were unreliable.
‘The data that we hold is not perfect, it is not great and therefore we are not entirely confident in the accuracy of the figures,’ he said.
‘But the good news is that this has come to light because so much work is being done around our data collection in Health and Social Services.’
Responding to the Deputy’s concerns about the new hospital, the minister said the final number of beds the proposed facility would cater for was still to be decided upon and consultation on the figure would be carried out.
