The Tribune

• ‘No capacity’ issues for Christmas and US demands

• Healthcare provider can do up to 150k tests monthly

• Testing sites expanded; GB has ‘biggest throughput’

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Doctors Hospital is “completely and absolutely confident” it can meet new US COVID testing protocols and higher Christmas/New Year travel demand after a 100-strong staffing expansion.

Dennis Deveaux, the BISX-listed healthcare provider’s chief financial officer, told Tribune Business yesterday that it has “no capacity constraints whatsoever” given its ability to perform between 120,000 and 150,000 COVID tests per month.

Asserting that Doctors Hospital has “excess capacity” when it comes to providing both RT-PCR and rapid antigen tests, he said the forecast increase in travel by both Bahamians and tourists over the festive season has yet to materialise but added that the ‘24-hours before travel’ testing deadline set by the US was “well within” its capabilities to meet.

Revealing that testing capacity at its British Colonial Hilton and Carmichael Road sites has been expanded to 1,000 and 750 tests per day, respectively, Mr Deveaux said Doctors Hospital’s sites in Grand Bahama and Exuma have also been similarly equipped.

Describing its Grand Bahama location, which has the ability to perform 1,5000 tests daily, as the healthcare provider’s “highest throughput site” with demand having “grown pretty drastically”, he added that another testing site will open in Eight Mile Rock in January 2022 - coinciding with its ongoing moves to establish a clinic in that same community.

Revealing that Doctors Hospital carries 75,000 COVID testing kits in its inventory at any one time, thereby ensuring that all Bahamian islands can access this critical resource, Mr Deveaux said the need for enhanced testing capacity will remain for the foreseeable future given that the pandemic shows no sign of slowing down.

“Completely and absolutely confident,” he told Tribune Business, when asked how well-placed Doctors Hospital was to meet both peak Christmas/New Year travel demand and the narrowed 24-hour testing window for US travellers.

“We’ve expanded our resource pool by 100-odd folks in anticipation of more stringent testing requirements. We did that somewhat fortuitously, not knowing this [US] announcement was coming down. We have no capacity constraints whatsoever, and all sites remain, including those that cater to tourists.

“We just..... frankly, we have excess capacity. We have no concerns, from a resources or supply chain perspective, about being able to meet demand. We were actually just looking at it before you called.”

Doctors Hospital now has some 270-plus staff working on performing testing and analysing the results. To-date, since the COVID pandemic’s start in March 2020, the BISX-listed healthcare provider has performed more than 817,000 tests - some 723,013 of the rapid antigen variety, and 94,246 RT-PCR tests.

“We haven’t seen a significant enough spike to do things differently,” Mr Deveaux said of Christmas/New Year travel, although he added that increased tourist arrivals as well as Bahamians travelling to the US will likely “trigger” heightened demand.

“There is no doubt we have the capacity to meet demand,” he reiterated. “We’re well within our capacity to meet the demand of Bahamians and returning guests. Last time we spoke, we were opening a site at Carmichael Road and that has the capacity to do 750 tests a day.

‘‘We’ve expanded the site at the Hilton, and that has the capacity to do 1,000 tests a day. We’ve put infrastructure on the ground in Grand Bahama and Exuma. We have no concerns about capacity whatsoever. That’s not going to be the challenge. The challenge is going to be what happens with travel, and that’s not so much to do with testing.”

Mr Deveaux said that COVID rapid antigen test results were typically available within one to two hours. And, while RT-PCR tests results are advertised as requiring a 24-48 hour wait, “the overwhelming majority” are turned around in 24 hours.

The Doctors Hospital financial chief added that it also offers “high priority services”, where results for an unvaccinated person suddenly needing to travel to the US can be made available in an hour. The healthcare provider also has a “mobile service for persons who do not want to come to one of our sites; we’ll come to them”.

Doctors Hospital presently has ten COVID testing sites in Nassau: Three apiece at Atlantis and Baha Mar, plus others at the Hilton, Town Centre Mall, Carmichael Road and at its own hospital. It also has locations in Grand Bahama and Exuma, making for a total of 12.

Besides the Eight Mile Rock site that will open early in the New Year, Mr Deveaux said: “We also see a need to expand further, maybe into Eleuthera and Abaco, but for right now - if we take it to say Abaco, Grand Bahama and Exuma, that’s the majority of airlift we have covered.

“Our site in Grand Bahama is the highest throughput site. Our capacity on the island is enough to test 1,500 people if it got to that. Our operation in Grand Bahama has grown pretty drastically. We’ll be offering in Grand Bahama, by the way, given that community has been more economically depressed, a relatively lower pricing than Nassau to reflect the economic reality of what’s going on.”

The VAT-exclusive pricing for a rapid antigen test in Eight Mile Rock and other communities will be discounted to a VAT-exclusive price of $15m, as opposed to the $20 charged in Nassau. The Nassau VAT-inclusive price for a rapid antigen test is $22.40, and for an RT-PCR test it stands at $134.40.

With the Government still rolling-out its pre-election campaign promise to deliver ‘free’ COVID testing for all, the service continues to provide a revenue stream that compensates Doctors Hospital for the pandemic’s impact on other areas of its business.

The BISX-listed healthcare provider enjoyed a $7.747m revenue boost as a result of administering more than 100,000 COVID-19 tests during the ten months to end-January 2021. It revealed to shareholders in its annual report for that year that the income from COVID testing was the key factor in delivering an 18.6 percent year-over-year increase in total revenues to $76.398m.

The top-line surge also helped Doctors Hospital overcome what it had originally anticipated would be a sharp drop in profitability, after April 2020 resulted in a 44.2 percent year-over-year revenue drop and net loss as numerous services and procedures were either reduced or cancelled due to the pandemic’s start.

The healthcare provider turned around a $351,917, or 16.4 percent, year-over-year decline in net income for its first quarter by transforming it into a 107 percent increase in full-year profits, which more than doubled from the prior year’s $6.009m to $12.439m for the 12 months to end-January 2021.

“It’s an unfortunate part of our business but an essential service we’re happy to deliver,” Mr Deveaux said of the company’s COVID testing. “We see no signs of it slowing down. At any point in time we carry as much as 75,000 test kits in inventory to ensure the islands of The Bahamas have the available resources they need. We see no signs of slowing down for the foreseeable future.”