By: Precious Mills
BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 18th January 2019)- Waters Anchor Medical Institute is the name of a US$ 60 million dollar plus
On the afternoon of Monday 14th January, members of the local media were invited to a press briefing held at The Pavilion of the Christophe Harbour premises.
Seated at the head table were Vice President of Waters Anchor Institute Pete Plamann; Chief Operating Officer Caribbean Healthcare Partners Ltd. and Waters Anchor Medical Institute Mary Miller Sallah; Greg Downey Co-founder of Caribbean Healthcare Partners Ltd Managing Member and another Co-founder of Caribbean Healthcare Partners Ltd and Managing Member Denzil Crooke of St.Kitts-Nevis.
Building work on the facility is expected to start during the second quarter of this year with a timeframe of a 16 to 18 month construction period.
Features will include eight (8) patient guest rooms and four (4) operating rooms.
Notably, patients to the facility would have to be referred to go there by a doctor. Also, the facility would not be an emergency unit.
Miller Sallah informed that the facility: “It is a 75,000 plus square foot medical facility that will focus specifically as of today in spine, sports medicine which includes orthopedics, joints, plastic, a very in-depth health and wellness service line which will include things such as executive health, women’s wellness and a number of other programmes that we will rotate from an outpatient standpoint and also regenerative medicine.”
She added: “We will also have a full diagnostics suite, 4,000 square foot physical therapy, rehabilitation space and then of course all the ancillary services within the healthcare facility that support the operation of delivering those services.”
Speaking to the client base, Miller Sallah had this to say: “The average patient or any patient that is going to be coming through the doors of Waters Anchor Medical Institute could be any individual in St.Kitts and Nevis as well as any individual across the 36 go to market strategy that we have so we are bringing through Waters Anchor Medical Institute services, clinical expertise that historically has been unavailable through various payer strategies …but the clientele is going to cover a very broad scope and through referrals.”
She emphasised that patients seen would be referred to the facility by their (the patients) doctors.
“So we are not running an emergency department or other acute care services so any patient coming through our doors will come through a referral; it could be a primary care physician here in St.Kitts, it could be a physician in Antigua, it could be a physician in Puerto Rico, it could be a physician in Trinidad etc. and more abroad.”
Miller Sallah went on to say: “So we will like to stay away from profiling a particular patient demographic because based on the standards that we are going to be operating at, any type of patient should come through our doors and the service and the quality and the expectation of what we will be delivering would be equal.”
Meanwhile, Plamann stated that services would be affordable.
“First and foremost we will be delivering care for local St.Kitts-Nevis citizens and we will be doing on the most affordable pricing that we can deliver. The quality outcomes are going to be at standards that are very, very high,, we will be recruiting and we have physicians lined up that would be delivering that quality outcomes according to the standards and their track records from where they currently practice be it in the US, the UK and according to the standards of St.Kitts-Nevis, they will have to be certified and qualified here so that care delivered to our local citizens along with the surrounding Caribbean island and of course my background of having roughly 30 years of experience in the US market working with different payers…insurance companies, different associations…”
Crooke recalled that he met Downey in 2013 while visiting his (Crooke) son and daughter in Indianapolis in the US. They were introduced by his son at church event.
The two held a meeting the next day whereby he (Crooke) shared “with him my own burden of the development of something quite meaningful in St.Kitts and out of this discussion came some interesting ideas.”
Initially, the pair thought of the manufacturing medical devices.
“…and then one thing led to the next and today we are just on the verge of having a ground breaking for what is going to be a 60 million plus US dollars facility with some other ancillary services to be added on,” Crooke pointed out.