In the past 4 years, the healthcare sector has undergone radical transformation with the emergence of NHI and two fully outfitted private hospitals. Throughout this period, the publicly battered but still capable KHMH has had to remain as the head cornerstone of healthcare, providing those demanding services like a 24-hour trauma center not lucrative or pretty enough to be carried by private facilities. And even as it's kept up with the yeoman's work of public healthcare, the KHMH has undergone its own transformation to an autonomous statutory board, and this week showed that in the brave new healthcare environment it still has some deft moves to make. Proof of that came on Monday when the KHMH authority announced that it would be teaming up with Belize Diagnostic Center to provide imaging equipment in-house. It's a great deal for Belize Diagnostic, which benefits from having a captive audience in-house. But what good will it bring for the thousands of regular unwell Belizeans who trudge through the KHMH daily? That's what we went to find out.
Jules Vasquez reporting,
It's housed in the KHMH, but it doesn't look at all like the KHMH. Those speakers don't sound like it, and it sure doesn't cost like the KHMH. The new Radiology and Imaging Department featuring Ultra-sound, Catscan and Mamogram machines are part of a new contract the KHMH has worked out with the Belize Diagnostic Center. But Dr. Harry Hoy, the owner of the diagnostic group says that despite appearances, it's not a merger. Just a pairing of like interest under an amorphous heading.
Dr. Harry Hoy
We are not really Diagnostic Center in KHMH. We, this is actually KHMH's Radiology Department. We just di run it.
Jules Vasquez
And now this privately managed and supplied unit will offer in-house services to KHMH's patients at private rates, but with a discount.
Dr. Harry Hoy
KHMH's in-house patients have difficulty transferring between emergency rooms and the different wards to private institutions. So they will benefit by being in-house. They'll only be taken from emergency rooms or from the wards directly to this department, that's one way. The second way is that they will be enjoying a twenty percent discount on the normal charges that they had to pay when they had to leave this hospital. And third, of course, apart from being easily transferred patients, its much safer. And, the fourth reason would be that KHMH did not have anything more than X-ray before.
Jules Vasquez
Sure enough, that's all they may have had, but it was offered to the public in the liberal spirit of public health care which means that emergency cases cannot be refused and if you can't pay now, try and find a way someday. But with a private unit, even in a public health care facility, to play, you've got to pay up-front. Even if it is an emergency. Packing off that standard private hard-line, Hoy says a concession has been made to maintain the spirit of public healthcare, even in this private framework.
Dr. Harry Hoy
We have negotiated mechanisms with the CEO and the administration of KHMH to avoid anyone getting turned away at all. So, we do not forsee that anyone will be turned away in an emergency.
Jules Vasquez
Has the KHMH obviated its responsibility?
Dr. Harry Hoy
None at all. When this contract was signed, we very clearly defined, even the definition of what indigent cases are, what emergency cases are, and what regular cases are. It was all negotiated, it was all explained to everybody and we've done all the mechanisms to cover everybody.
Jules Vasquez
And while Hoy gives the assurance that no one will be turned away because they can't pay, this new arrangement now makes one thing certain. That the KHMH and by extension, the public health care system will never own a Cat-scan, Mammogram or a high definition Ultra-sound. These important diagnostic devices will remain the exclusive domain of private providers even if they are housed in the country's premier public facility.
Dr. Harry Hoy
It is very difficult for KHMH to have invested the amount of capital that we've put, that we, our company has put into KHMH. We believe that it's a good deal for KHMH in which they save the capital investment that already exist in Belize and they don't have to repeat anything and they get all the services that they never had.
Jules Vasquez
And now, for the KHMH Board, at least, there is no need for it to happen - at least not for the next ten years, the life-span of the contract with the diagnostic group.
The contract to provide the imaging services at the KHMH was not open to a public bid because, according to hospital CEO Dr. Alavrao Rosado, principals of the only other provider, Universal Healthcare, indicated that they had no interest.