HEART Institute of the Caribbean (HIC), a diagnosis and treatment centre for cardiovascular diseases, will be opening a satellite office in Ocho Rios, St Ann — part of a mandate, it says, to improve access to health care for Jamaicans.

HIC vice-president of business development, Gabrielle Banbury said that while the new kiosk facility will not be as outfitted as the firm’s sprawling headquarters on Balmoral Avenue in Kingston, the utilisation of a telemedicine platform will allow patients to access most of the company’s regular services. Telemedicine is the growing application of medicine where medical information is transferred via interactive audiovisual media in consultations and applications of medical procedures. By making medical facilities more accessible, Branbury said, it alleviates one of the most burdensome costs of health care for many patients — transportation.

“Though our telemedicine platform, we have the ability to consult with patients and provide care on the instructions of the cardiologist,” Branbury told Sunday Finance.

“In the event that a patient needs more interventional services, we would then have them come into Kingston, (but) if we can cut out that cost unless it is absolutely neccessary, it reduces the cost of providing care to the public,” she added.

HIC’s plan is to roll out satellite offices across the island, said HIC chairman and CEO Dr Ernest Madu.

“We are making a complete departure from the paternalistic approach to health care where we’re up there in the ‘Eiffel Tower’ and you’re down, down there…so, we’re committed to giving care to people who need it because the people who need it the most are also the people who have the most limited resources,” said Madu.

“The man you’re telling to come to Kingston from St Elizabeth, for example, that’s the man without the transportation and the man who doesn’t have the money to pay for the transportation,” continued Madu. “You say the man must find a few thousand dollars to take the bus from St Elizabeth but you forget that that visit also means that he has no income for that entire day… so, if you make it possible for him to get his care just by crossing the road, then he can get his care and still make his income, so it’s not too demanding for him.”

The planned rollout of satellite offices is part of HIC’s broad mission to be an integral player in the development of an adequate infrastructure on the island to deal with cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of death, disability and hospitalisation in Jamaica. Hypertension and diabetes are leading risk factors for cardiovascular disease and is prevalent in Jamaica and many parts of the Caribbean.

“If you add every single cause of known death in Jamaica, including murder and cancer, you will not even approach heart disease,” said HIC president Dr Dania Baugh. “What we know to be true and is being recognised around the world is that in order to deal with something like this, you do have to create an infrastructure and you do have to create processes that can be duplicated. So whether or not Dr Madu or Dr Baugh, for example, is here tomorrow, you have a facitlity that can keep going,” she said.

Against this background, cardiovascular disease accounts for a major portion of health care spending in Jamaica, where, according to Madu, some 56 per cent of hospital beds are allocated to patients with the condition. Hence, the HIC boss noted that it only makes sense for Jamaica to build capacity in this area not only for self-sustainability but to attract foreign investments as well.

“For developing countries like Jamaica, we’ll have to sit down and ask the right questions, like what is important to us and how do we allocate our resources; that’s where we go into building capacity to doing those things,” said Madu.

“There has to be regulatory changes and structural adjustments that recognise that in a society, when we work out what our problems are, then we need to do things to increase capacity building in those areas, which would be doing things to attract more cardiologists into Jamaica, not less,” continued Madu. “We shouldn’t be focusing on raising money to support another hospital in America when we can attract the skill sets and the structure to do those things in Jamaica and actually have people from America come here and pay, which would create jobs for everyone in Jamaica.”

Baugh opined that by allocating resources towards an area like cardiovascular disease, it will also beef up Jamaica’s battered job market.

“I always go back to how many people graduate from university in Jamaica with what I call ‘degrees of unemployment’,” noted Baugh. “How many human resource officers do we need in Jamaica? How many social development researchers etc? We have these career paths that we cannot possibly absorb in our society and people come out furious and frustrated because we created permanently unemployable people.

“It’s a social mission but it also makes good business sense,” she added.

HIC will this month complete its first three-year health course that trains individuals to understand and apply modern technology in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Upon completion, graduates acquire a certificate that will allow them to practice as a cardio technician.