June 2018c

86 87 THE MEDICAL PAVILION BAHAMAS Our partnerships have led to: n Large improvements of the ambience and general hospital environment n Patient Satisfaction has been significantly improved n The morale and job satisfaction of staff in the areas operated by PAL have improved n Improvements in the physicians’ loyalty to the institution are evident, as they are now stakeholders in the delivery of healthcare and an integral part of the management team of hospitals With the cooperation of The Ministry of Health and The Public Hospitals Authority, the Physicians Alliance Group manages the Private Ward Services at The Princess Margaret Hospital in a Public Private Partnership.It serves as a model experiment for advancing healthcare services in The Bahamas. lution CT Scanning and Nuclear Medicine and Cardiology, and most recently, fully digital Hae- modialysis Services. “Based on us having done that for over 20 years, the Prime Minister of Antigua asked us in 2009 if we would consider building a simi- lar cancer centre in Antigua that would allow patients access to the services at a discount. We agreed, with the understanding that the governments of The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) would support the centre for their constituents. Today, The Med- ical Pavilion Antigua is a 20,000-square-foot facility housing The Cancer Centre Eastern Caribbean, and it will house The Heart Centre Antigua, and an imaging centre restricted to CT and PET scanning for cancer and heart patients, amongst others. “We partner with local hospitals and profes- sionals because we feel it’s important to com- plement and supplement their services, rather than compete. We provide advanced cancer services – they still do chemotherapy (medical oncology) and surgical procedures, while we provide radiation therapy. When it comes to the heart, we plan to provide advanced interven- tional procedures (angioplasty, stents for heart attacks, fix heart valves, put in pacemakers, etc.) for the whole sub-region of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, which numbers nine Pavilion, and eventually after more internation- al outreach, The Medical Pavilion Bahamas. We now have The Medical Pavilion Antigua, as well, serving the Eastern Caribbean.” BVC: What does the Partnered Care Concept entail? Dr. Brown: “We developed our own health- care delivery model called “Partnered Care”, which recognizes that neither the government, nor the private sector, nor the consumer (the user sector) can afford healthcare in its pres- ent format, anywhere in the world. We needed to make services more readily available to the general community in order to enhance eq- uity and access. So, in 1990, before I saw the first patient, we set up a three-tiered payment structure for patients. If a service were to cost $10, that price was applied to an insured pa- tient. The self-paying private individual was discounted 25 percent to $7.50, and the gov- ernment patient, who was neither insured nor able to afford private care, was given a 50 percent discount to $5.00. “This practice was extended from a full cad- re of Cardiology Services to Cardiac Surgery, Cancer Services, especially Radiation Therapy, advanced imaging services such as high reso-