Business View Caribbean October/November 2018

42 43 TCI HOSPITAL says TCI CEO, Gaston Levac. “They went out for tenders and, eventually, InterHealth Canada was chosen as the partner to build the facilities. The company would borrow the funds and the pay- back on it would be over a 25-year period, from 2008 to 2033.” Levac says the contract language spells out clearly both party’s responsibilities - essentially the creation of state-of-the-art facilities at two sites, with a contract containing well-defined expectations and key performance indicators, as well as a well-defined methodology for moni- toring and continuing to improve services over the pact’s 25-year lifespan. Spurring the decision to move ahead was Turks and Caicos’ burgeoning popularity with tourists and the accompanying growth of its hospitality industry. “The growth of the hotel industry was quite rapid, and quite robust,” says Levac. “The population began to increase quite rapidly and, in order to ensure that it didn’t dis- courage potential future tourists from coming, the government wanted to make sure that it had a high-quality, sophisticated hospital sys- tem.” “The larger island, by far, in terms of popula- tion, is Providenciales,” Levac continues. “The population is about 28,000, so the majority of the sophisticated services are here.” The bulk of TCI’s patients are enrolled in the Turks and Caicos’ National Health Insurance Plan, which covers people born in the nation “and people who have established themselves here to work in a fairly robust tourist industry and everything that supports that,” Levac adds. “Those people can become citizens here and be eligible to be covered by the National Health Insurance plan.” A significant portion of the hospital’s clientele is comprised of the increasing number of tour- ists who flock to the island chain located about 575 miles southeast of Miami, about midway between the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. Levac says there may be as many as 20,000 tourists on the main islands at any one time during the winter months. If visitors need medical care, the hospital derives revenue from their insurance carriers. “The third type of client that we have is the uninsured patient,” he adds. “Their numbers are increasing because of the huge amount of illegal immigration occurring, mostly from Haiti. We are a private hospital now, in partnership with government, and we must treat these people under the contract agreement we have. Unfortunately, we cannot derive revenue from these patients. So, we have an issue there.We’re still talking with the government about wheth- er we should be entirely responsible for those people or whether they should participate in that. At this point, we are taking care of them the best that we can like any other client that comes through our doors.”