BY ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Significant construction of Doctors Hospital’s Grand Bahama location is expected to be concluded by the end of year, with a boost of 90 jobs and at a cost of more than $25m. 

During the announcement of the successful completion of Doctors Hospital’s sixth Joint Commission International Accreditation (JCI) yesterday, chief financial officer Dennis Deveaux revealed that operations of the new Grand Bahama location is expected to have an opening as of the first quarter of 2026. He said staffing will be deployed from New Providence “but we expect certainly to have significant representation from physicians on the ground”. 

“So the Grand Bahama hospital, we expect to conclude substantial construction toward the end of the year and to have an opening in the early part of next year, within the first quarter,” Mr Deveaux said. “Clearly this significant investment, north of $25m from Doctors Hospital will have meaningful impacts on the employment landscape, certainly of that island, not only directly for associates that we move to that island, but also for vendors who we expect to support the operation of the hospital. 

“We estimate at full maturity that the hospital will employ directly 90 people. Of course, healthcare is fundamentally physician-led, and so physicians will drive and lead all of what we do in Grand Bahama, some of whom will invariably come from New Providence, based on our footprint here. But we expect certainly to have significant representation from physicians on the ground. We do employ physicians in Grand Bahama today, and so the hospital will certainly deepen our commitment to physician leadership in Grand Bahama.”

Sheena Antonio-Collie, chief medical officer, added: “Our census fluctuates, but in general, the capacity of our hospitals, we have a 75-bed capability, which, as you know, we can extend even further, as we did during the COVID pandemic. And usually we have a capacity that can go up to about 40 to 45 patients in a day. Our staffing, which is the staffing of the health system, is about 955 persons that we employ. So it’s a robust staff to really engineer and run a health system that expands not just at Doctors Hospital, the main hospital, but also goes into the Family Islands. As you know, we have a centre in Exuma. We have two clinics in Grand Bahama, the hospital that’s coming up in Grand Bahama, and we have about 15 other centres around providence that we man as well too.”

Kimdashé Sherman, vice president of quality and standards, said Doctors Hospital experienced a four-day examination process for JCI which Ms Sherman referred to as “tedious”, including the observation of their processes as well as interviewing associates and patients.

“Speaking to how we prepared for such an amazing feat, the staff, the associates, the physicians and all of our team members working in tandem to make sure that we can display how we are meeting the standards for joint commission,” Ms Sherman said. “There are many chapters and documents, standards and measurable elements for which we are measured against when the survey team comes over to our facility. 

“We underwent a four-day examination process where three very well-versed experts in the healthcare field were able to come to our facility and look at our processes, speak to our associates, interview our patients, to confirm and affirm that we are meeting the standards that they set out. This was a long and very, very tedious process, but kudos to all team members who really stood up and stood out and demonstrated how we are delivering excellent care every day. 

“And so this title of receiving another joint commission accreditation is, without mention, to be one of the most valuable things that we can share with you as Bahamians and as tourists who are coming to our facility to show that we’re in line with, if not meeting and exceeding the standards of other organisations who also hold this title. So we’re very proud and very excited to share this news with you today.”

The experts enjoyed the “autonomy” of choosing patients and available staff to speak with, according to president and CEO Charles Diggiss. He said “the questions range from your attitudes or feelings about your employment, your attitudes about quality and safety, and whether you believe, and not worded in a convincing way, but whether you believe the care that you’re receiving is of a high standard, a high quality”. Mr Diggiss added that there are plans to extend the examination. 

“So there’s a whole lot of work that one has to do to get the facility prepared, to get the staff prepared and regularised, and to get all of the, more than 1,000 policies associated with the healthcare space, to get them completed and to maintain that so that in the future, when Joint Commission comes, they would do spot checks, etcetera, to make sure that we actually holding the standard,” the chief executive added. “But the preparation, there’ll be a whole other lecture on the preparation for the exam, but you can imagine that we spent a lot of time and applied a lot of resources in trying to get the place ready, get the people, our associates, ready, and then get our systems and processes ready.

“So there is another exercise that over the next few years, we will go into. We call it an enterprise wide, or health system wide, evaluation of our services with Joint Commission. So we’re going to take the success of the main hospital, which is our signature, and then extend that into wherever a Doctors Hospital locates to provide patient care, extend the examination. We’ve extended the culture, we’ve extended the training and the requirements. Now we’ll extend the examination.”

Mr Deveaux noted that the accreditation will add to a reputation that creates a sense of trust and confidence in both Bahamians and tourists that “a very high standard of healthcare excellence has been met for six consecutive times here at Doctors Hospital”.

“Doctors Hospital clearly maintains strong partnerships with key providers in the hospitality space, whether that’s large resorts like Baha Mar, we clearly have a clinic domiciled on Paradise Island to serve the needs of that community, and we continue to extend our footprint into the cruise tourism space, working closely with partners like Royal Caribbean, who we’ve had a relationship with for quite a while,” Mr Deveaux said. 

“In a given year, across the 3,000 discharges that we have from our main hospital and the roughly 40,000 patient encounters that we would have in the outpatient space, so in a clinic setting outside of the main hospital, tourists would represent anywhere from eight to ten percent of that. Clearly with the significant investments, in particular with cruise tourism in New Providence, and more recently, in Grand Bahama, we would expect to be deepening our support for guests coming to the shore having a medical emergency, and clearly, Doctors Hospital being in a position to respond we have a dedicated team committed to what we refer to as utilisation management for folks that might be having complications that are here on a short stay or an overnight visit.

Mr Diggiss stressed the importance of the accreditation adding “it’s because we have the JCI that you can understand the confidence of patients, especially those who travel and those who come from out of The Bahamas and Bahamians who travel for care, would recognise that it is hugely significant that Doctors Hospital maintains this level of quality so that in the event of any argument, we can simply reply, we are JCI accredited.” He noted that no other hospital in the English-speaking Caribbean can boast that they’ve been successful six successive times regarding re-accreditation through JCI.