GRAND CAYMAN, The Cayman Islands – Approximately 2,000 local elected officials, Caribbean healthcare leaders, medical professionals and invited guests attended the Grand Opening of the region’s first tertiary care hospital on Feb. 25, 2014, as a diverse group of speakers praised the new hospital for meeting a significant need in the region.
Health City Cayman Island (HCCI) is the dream of Narayana Health (NH) founder Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, a renowned cardiologist from India, who partnered with Ascension, the largest non-profit and largest Catholic healthcare system in the U.S., to build a 104-bed hospital offering cardiac, cardiology and orthopedic services to patients throughout the region.
HCCI expects to perform its first surgery in mid-March 2014.
Health City Cayman Islands will bring a new level of healthcare to Grand Cayman and will serve not only the residents of the island, but also those from the greater Caribbean region and beyond,” said Ascension President and Chief Executive Officer Anthony R. Tersigni, EdD, FACHE. “While Ascension has its own long history of providing safe, clinically excellent, high-quality care, we also recognize the tremendous opportunity this partnership provides us to learn new ways of caring for the people we serve.”
Speakers at the outdoor ceremony included Dr. Shetty and Dr. Tersigni; Cayman Islands Governor Helen Kilpatrick, Premier Alden McLaughlin, and Minister of Health, Sports, Youth and Culture Osbourne Bodden; and Gene Thompson, HCCI project director.
The Most Reverend Allen Vigneron, Catholic Archbishop of Detroit, provided the blessing.
Although Dr. Shetty envisions expanding HCCI’s healthcare footprint in the future, Ascension is involved only with this phase-one tertiary care hospital at this time. Ascension hopes to learn how NH’s clinical approach in a hospital setting can help to reduce costs in U.S. healthcare delivery, while providing greater access to care for underserved populations in the Caribbean region and elsewhere. There are approximately 40 million people living in the greater Caribbean.
Following the ceremony, guests were invited to tour the 107,000-square-foot facility and participate in a brief reception where they met Dr. Shetty, Dr. Tersigni and the team of Indian clinicians who will staff the new hospital.
Later in the day, approximately 200 invited guests participated in a symposium hosted by Ascension and Narayana Health. Titled “The Future of High-Quality, Affordable Healthcare,” the symposium featured a dozen recognized thought-leaders from the healthcare and technology industries, who discussed trends and developments in the ever-changing healthcare environment.
Speakers included David B. Pryor, MD, President, Ascension Clinical Holdings; Krishnaswamy Dinesh, co-founder of Infosys; Samir Mitra, CEO of iKare Technologies; Francisco D’Souza, CEO of Cognizant; Omar Ishrak, Chairman and CEO of Medtronic; Gene Thompson, HCCI project director; David Houle, futurist; Emily Rhinehart, American International Group; Dr. Lyle Joyce, Cardiac Surgeon from the Mayo Clinic; Tarum Khanna, Harvard Business School; and Dr. John Finnegan, dean at the University of Minnesota.
The symposium, which will be an annual event, was moderated by Robert Pearl, MD, from Kaiser Permanente.
