A section of the a cardiovascular centre at 23 Balmoral Avenue

A group of doctors with Jamaican links have formed a consortium that has invested $180 million in a cardiovascular centre at 23 Balmoral Avenue in Kingston. The centre, called the Heart Institute of the Caribbean (HIC), is to begin operating by mid-January next year.

The facility will be the region's first comprehensive, state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment centre of its kind.

The institute's chairman and CEO is Dr Ernest Madu - a US cardiologist and senior professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Madu is married to Jamaican cardiologist, Dr Dainia Baugh, and the doctors currently own and operate seven health centres in the United States.

Madu and Baugh will team up with local consultant cardiologists Drs Edwin Tulloch-Reid and Paul Edwards - the island's only interventional cardiologists - to develop the centre.

In mid-January, the facility will start operations with four full-time cardiologists, a paediatric cardiologist, a radiologist, an internist, and an endocrinologist.

HIC will offer all aspects of cardiac testing and treatment including nuclear cardiology, coronary angiography, pacemaker management, autonomic function testing, vascular ultrasound, and transesophageal echocardiography.

During its first phase of operation, HIC will focus on offering non-invasive procedures, which Tulloch-Reid described as being consistent with the most modern practices in this area of specialisation.

"Advances in technology are making the need for older invasive surgical procedures less and less," he explained.

According to Tulloch-Reid, lower operating costs in Jamaica would enable HIC to offer sophisticated health care to regional heart patients at significantly lower rates than at comparable facilities in the USA.

"We estimate that heart patients in the Caribbean spend at least US$30 million each year in the United States - mostly on diagnostic procedures," he said. "In the United States they have much higher costs for paramedical and support services, as well as insurance. The centre will definitely attenuate the need for Jamaicans to travel to Florida to get diagnosed and treated."

The centre will also be targeting Caribbean nationals who reside in North America.

"We see a lot of potential for health tourism here," said Tulloch-Reid. "There are about 80 million Americans who are under-insured, and about 40 million who have no health insurance at all. There are a lot of Americans who currently access cheaper health care overseas in places as far as Thailand."

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