By ANNELIA NIXON

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Representatives of Doctor’s Hospital revealed their plans of expansion on the Family Islands during the announcement of their Loyalty Advantage Membership Programme.

Grand Bahama is opening a brand new 25-bed facility in Grand Bahama, according to Dennis Deveaux, CFO of Doctor’s Hospital.

“So we continue to progress at a very satisfactory pace with our new hospital, which is a 25 bed brand new facility in downtown Grand Bahama,” Mr Deveaux said. “Our hospital is on budget and we expect the hospital’s opening sometime in the summer to fall of 2025.”

Mr Deveaux added that Doctors Hospital has an urgent care facility in Exuma, as well as clinics in Grand Bahama and Eleuthera.

“Today we are already in Grand Bahama. We have two clinics in Grand Bahama, one in Eight Mile Rock and then one in downtown Freeport on West Mall Drive. We have a full urgent care centre in Georgetown, Exuma, and we are actually planning to announce the opening of a new medical center in Rock Sound, Eleuthera. We’ll be in Eleuthera this coming Friday to engage the residents of Eleuthera and really understand what their needs are and then how we can cooperate with the existing providers on the ground. Whether it’s Bahamas Wellness, you know, closer to Governor’s, or whether it’s Family Medical Centre a little south Rock Sound, we certainly want to elevate the level of care nationally already in Grand Bahama and Exuma. But our immediate plan certainly will take us into Rock Sound, Eleuthera.”

As for the Paradise Island location, Mr Deveaux said it is to provide urgent medical care for guests and workers on the island and that the decision to open that branch was due to high demand.

“So we want to firstly serve the folks that work on this island and improve the medical facilities that are on this island as folks come to work. It’s difficult if you have to leave the island and come back should something happen, if you need to go and run and see a doctor if you need to get some labs drawn, it becomes very, very difficult even to get across the island and back, say, on a lunch hour or before work or immediately after work. So our chief priority really is to serve the people that are working on this island.

“Secondly, we know that there are a lot of tourists and there are a lot of second homeowners, and that drives Airbnb and other forms of transient guests. We want them to know that if something should happen, that there is a world class medical facility here to have that first level of urgent response to their medical needs. And so that core demand, the demand of people working on the island, the demand of guests coming to the island, worried about livability, worried about concerns around their health, that drove our planning to put a facility here. It’s a 3,500 square foot facility that is able to respond to urgent care. It also has a pharmacy in the front, and so if you need to pick up a prescription or to get an over the counter medication that is now available on Paradise Island for the folks that work here as well as the transient guests.”

Mr Deveaux also spoke on under capacity in hospitals.

“So fundamentally, we recognise that there’s under capacity nationally and Bahamians experience this when there are difficulties with accessing medical care, whether that’s attempting to get into PMH or attempting to get into the Rand Memorial. There’s no secret that Bahamians experience this. Our role as a private sector act is certainly to cooperate wherever we can to make our capacity available to people that need it. And fundamentally, what we’ve done today is to make our outpatient product, our urgent care product, something happens and you need to get in to see a doctor right away, we’ve made that more accessible and affordable at $119 per month. We think that really is a huge step. But our inpatient capacity remains broadly available to support the government, however they should require of us.”