The Tribune

By NATARIO MCKENZIE Tribune Business Reporter nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net DOCTORS Hospital plans to re-open its Western Medical Plaza in June, its president telling Tribune Business yesterday that some $1.2 million would be invested to ready the outpatient facility. "Everything is on course for it to be open in June. The building will definitely be ready. I'm not sure all of the equipment will be there in time," Barry Rassin said. The facility could ultimately create 75 jobs when at full capacity, but Mr Rassin said he anticipated starting with a smaller staff compliment. "We will probably be looking at around 30 employees to start. I want to start as cost effectively as possible," he explained. The Blake Road-based facility fits right into the BISX-listed company's medical tourism and international outpatient program, given its proximity to Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) and relatively secluded location. With some 16 per cent of Doctors Hospital's business coming from non-Bahamians, the BISX-listed health care provider is attempting to make serious inroads into that market and increase its proportion of foreign patients to 50 per cent. Doctor's Hospital closed Western Medical Plaza almost nine years ago due to a downturn in the economy. Re-opening under a new name, the full service hospital will provide an emergency care unit to service the expanded population that now lives and works in western New Providence, as well as provide elective ambulatory surgery services for international patients seeking treatment in the Bahamas. Globally, medical tourism is a $2 billion-a-year industry, and Doctors Hospital continues to receive an increasing number of inquiries about elective procedures available to international patients. It has begun aggressively working on its marketing strategy and campaign to attract its core target markets in the US, Canada and the Caribbean. The hospital already has a successful HIFU programme, which brings about 15 patients to the Bahamas each month.