From IMTJ

The new Cayman Islands medical tourism venture, Health City is nearly complete. The $80 million hospital has an official opening scheduled for February 25th, and the first patients are expected to arrive about a week later. Construction work on the hotel, the next phase of the project, is set to begin in March.

The 140-bed hospital in Grand Cayman will initially offer cardiac surgery, cardiology and orthopedics. It has begun a marketing campaign to attract patients, initially from the Caribbean region. It will not target the US market until it has achieved JCI accreditation, a process that will take at least another six months.

Key medical positions have been filled with doctors from India, and the majority of the nursing staff is expected to come from the USA and Canada, as there are few trained staff locally. Caymanians will be mostly in administrative roles.

For the Cayman Islands, the hospital is much more than just another business venture. So much time and effort has the country invested in the project that it sees medical tourism as the potential third biggest economic activity after tourism and offshore finance.

The hospital seeks to price services, at around 50% of US prices; this may or may not be a low enough price to tempt Caribbean patients away from competing countries.

Local co-owner Gene Thompson says that it has always been the plan to start slowly with Caribbean patients first and then seek to market the hospital to insurance companies, private individuals and employers in the US and elsewhere in the region. Sceptics argue that attracting Caribbean patients in sufficient numbers to pay for such a huge investment will not be easy, nor getting US patients; while the chances of insurers and employers taking up the offer are slim.

Getting to the hospital is not straightforward; for many in the region, it involves a round-trip via Miami. The hospital owners are in talks with Cayman Airways and other local operators, including Blue Sky airlines, a new venture planned by a group of Cayman-based businessmen. To enable patients to get there easily and cheaply, they will need new scheduled and charter flights throughout the Caribbean and Central America, and not having to go via the Miami hub.

The long-term plan is to build a medical training facility on site and work with the Department of Education and the University College of the Cayman Islands to recruit and train Caymanians for the health-care industry. Even if this happens, it is many years in the future.

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