Business View Caribbean - August/September 2018

98 99 being the only public food services opera- tion in the English speaking Caribbean that has that credential. And, earlier this year, the hospital pursued a hospital-wide accredita- tion with Accreditation Canada International (ACI) and was awarded the Gold Standard of accreditation [for Quality in Health Care]. So, we have a number of international accreditation designations under our belt which were pursued as part of our overall vision to promote quality improvements and safety which would impact the patient-care experience across all areas of our operations. “On the hospital philanthropy side: this contin- ues to grow; we surpassed our $12 million mark in just under four years.We intend to re-launch our Queen Elizabeth Hospital Trust, which is a special vehicle responsible for aggressively pur- suing donor funding from organizations, institu- tions, the Diaspora and individuals that have a high net worth, to provide much needed capital to fund mainly capital improvements and tech- nology refresh.We’ve also launched our Corpo- rate Business Unit, which is another dedicated unit for processing private patients and market- ing of spare capacity towards the generation of THE QUEEN ELIZABETH HOSPITAL additional revenues. So, hospital philanthropy will continue to grow, and we are now moving it to the next level. “The new financing model: health financing is the responsibility of the Ministry of Health. There’s a new government in place, and in the recent pronouncement by the Honorable Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Economic Affairs and Investments, the hospital will be the beneficiary of $45M in a full year of additional funding from the introduction of a Health Services Contribution of 2.5 percent, of which 1.5 is paid by the em- ployer, and 1.0 percent is paid by the employee. These funds will be earmarked specifically to fund shortfalls in allocation from the Consolidat- ed Fund. Contributions will be remitted to, and managed by, the National Insurance Scheme for onward transmission to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. So, we are seeing a move towards a different type of modeling aimed at sustaining the package of services provided to the public. “Finally, we normally have an annual board meeting open to the public, which is our inno- vative approach to improving governance and stewardship, and one recommendation that came from such a meeting was the need to consid-