American World Clinics executives eye $200 million medical center for The Bahamas
NASSAU, Bahamas — Executives from the global health care venture American World Clinics (AWC) are in The Bahamas this week to discuss the establishment of the country’s biggest medical tourism site — a $200 million-plus venture to create over 200 jobs post construction.
President of AWC Robert Priddy will be meeting key officials in healthcare, tourism, finance and the business sector. The three-day schedule will include stops in New Providence at the Office of The Prime Minister, Tourism and Health Ministries as well as in Grand Bahama to the Port Authority and the Freeport Container Port, among other visits.
“No one is going to places with cold climates for medical tourism,” said Priddy. “We believe The Bahamas is a perfect location in this region and gives us an opportunity to provide the best of global health care to patients from around the world and here in The Bahamas.”
Using a business model involving the export of U.S. medicine, AWC hospitals target medical travelers, the expatriate community and local patients seeking the U.S. standard of medicine and medical care in some of the world’s most desirable tourist and business locations. Once established, AWC will staff its hospitals primarily with U.S. trained physicians – which include local doctors — and will seek the most advanced accreditation standards for its facilities.
AWC has targeted Barbados, the Bahamas, the Canary Islands, Uruguay and several far Eastern locations as flagship enterprises. It is working closely with local governments in developing their hospitals and presents a unique public-private partnership model that will bring considerable wealth to the host countries.
“Working closely with our architectural and construction partners, HDR and DCK World Wide, respectively, we have developed a very sophisticated modularized approach to hospital development,” said Dr. Paul Angelchik, CEO of AWC. “It is predicated on a core of specialty surgical procedures and sophisticated diagnostics, but we can add a wide range of medical specialties to expand and grow the enterprise depending on market opportunities and the needs and interests of the local community.”
With this model, AWC projects initial foreign direct investment for this project of $200 million to $400 million depending on the initial scope of the project and annual economic contributions to the local economies at one and one half to twice that amount. In addition, AWC plans to hire locally which will provide nearly 200 high-paying local health care and support jobs.
“We strive to be good corporate citizens, and give to the local communities through economic development, jobs, and knowledge and technology transfer because those are important objectives of our company,” Dr. Angelchik added.
Find out more at www.americanworldclinics.com.
Photo: President of AWC Robert Priddy.
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