Business View Caribbean | May 2021

39 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN MAY 2021 except for invasive cardiology, and a few other neurosurgical procedures. That’s where we are today. We have developed different departments – obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery, radiology and medical laboratory services – everything that you would find in a modern hospital.” With only one other hospital in the area, St. Augustine Private Hospital fills an important need in the community and often works with the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Health. Dr. Ali acknowledges, “From time to time in our existence, we have had partnerships with the government, providing certain services for what we would call public health plans. Those services are bought by the Ministry of Health. For instance, St. Augustine Private Hospital was in a program with the Ministry of Health with respect to providing dialysis services. That was done for patients referred from the public service that require dialysis. Sometimes patients are referred who couldn’t be attended to at public hospitals ST . AUGUST INE PR I VATE HOSP I TAL because of the lack of available bed space, or because of the lack of the specialty that was required. Those patients would come to us.” As a private facility, the hospital must also meet specific criteria set out by the Ministry of Health, in order to be licensed to operate. This license is renewed yearly, after an annual inspection from the Ministry. St. Augustine Private Hospital has been committed to keeping all 180 members of its staff working, despite a 55 percent decrease in revenue when the country went into lockdown at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Even though we had suffered from a revenue standpoint, we indicated very early on that we were going to ride this out, maintaining the staffing levels,” says Ali. “Nobody was terminated. Throughout the period we had constant consultations, developing certain programs within the hospital to provide counseling and stress relief responses and really teaching the