Hospital holds off on retirement

FRIDAY, MARCH 16: Hospital bosses have decided to delay plans to strictly enforce their retirement policy for a year.

Last November staff at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital were told that over 65s would have to retire at the end of March unless they could present a business case their skills were still needed.

But this week employees were told that the policy, which has been in place for decades but not strictly enforced, would not take effect until March 2013. We understand many members of staff who thought they would have to leave the hospital are “extremely relieved”.

A spokesperson for Bermuda Hospital’s Board said: “We recognise these are economically challenging times, and so we are relaxing the policy for one year so that if an individual who is 65 or older needs longer to prepare for the transition to retirement they can do so. People who still wish to retire at 65 can do so, and some people over 65 will remain beyond the 12 months if the business case supports it.

The BHB said it was not able to provide an exact figure on how many people would be affected by the decision. But the spokesperson said the existing policy whereby people retire at 65 and any individuals who wish to work beyond that age can request to do so was “normal business process.”

The BHB statement added: “While the process of requesting to work beyond 65 is not changing, we are assuring employment for all those who wish to remain beyond 65, for at least 12 months. A clinical need for staff, especially Bermudian nurses and physicians, would be a solid business case for someone who wishes to work beyond 65 being able to do so. People are not automatically retired at 65 if they wish to stay on, so just because our outpatient surgical unit has four nurses at or over 65 years of age is no indication that they would have all retired.

“BHB would never put a local service at risk, or retire a Bermudian who wanted to remain, if there were no qualified Bermudian candidates to replace him or her with. We hope that this has given affected staff the time to better prepare for retirement.”