Hospital to establish charitable fund

| 19/03/2009

(CNS): The Cayman Islands Hospital will soon be soliciting public donations and taking charitable contributions to help finance health care provision in the country as a result of a change in the law tabled yesterday (Wednesday 18 March) in the Legislative Assembly by the Minister for Health and Human Services. The Heath Services Authority Amendment bill will facilitate the establishment of a charitable trust for the hospital. Moving the debate, Anthony Eden said that the creation of a foundation would have an important impact of the hospital’s finances.

“Funding health care is a critical issue for all modern jurisdictions, and a hospital foundation can help to raise money for all sorts of different projects,” he said. “There are many generous people inside the Cayman Islands and regular overseas visitors who are wealthy that may want to contribute, and this offers them a way to do so with confidence.”

He said it was common throughout the US for hospitals to establish charitable funds and that this mechanism would help as the CI Heath Services Authority continued its goal to achieve international health care standards. The new fund, to be known as the Cayman Islands Health Foundation, will be managed by a new committee of seven members.

The amendment also provides for the variation of the composition of the HSA Board. The idea behind this is to ensure that the people who come on to the board have specific qualification and skills that the hospital needs. Eden said the board had recently appointed individual professionals with IT, HR and financial skills, as these have proved to be essential skills. It also prohibits civil servants and other health professionals from sitting on the board to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Furthermore, it seeks to streamline the board’s broader operations and enables it to determine the fees for services.

Eden said that the HSA had endured turbulent times but things were improving and one more step in that overall goal to improve health care was to sort out the muddle regarding the board.

“The decision has been made to improve the board management and create a regulated fund raising mechanism,” Eden said of the bill, adding that the need to find people with specific areas of expertise to help improve hospital management was critical. The minister recently announced the appointment of six key professionals in keeping with what he described as a fresh approach to the Board’s governance responsibilities. Patricia Muschette, Krishan Welcome, Canover Watson, David Shibli, and Eddie Ebanks were appointed to serve one-year terms. Dr Delroy Jefferson, served for four months, and functioned as deputy chairman, with the special assignment of orientating the Board to this new model of governance.

Standing to support the bill from the opposition benches, Rolston Anglin noted that the fund should not send a message that access to health care has become dependent on the goodwill of donors.

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  1. Anonymous says:

    I must be mistaken . Wasn’t there a trust set up a while back…already? Some thing is not clear here. Or is it that the current trust membership unpaltable to the politburo in the Ministry?  

  2. Albert Jackson says:

    Minister Anthony needs to retire for the good of the country. With his malfeasence on the cover up of Dungy Fever that could have wiped out our whole country and giving in to the smokers is a disgrace to his position. He has no backbone to stand up for the health of our citizens. He should no longer be incharge of health. He makes the stupidist excusess for the most major of our country’s problems. The PPM needs to dump this hump.

    Albert Jackson

  3. Anonymous says:

    This minister must be crazy!!! How on earth does he expect us to support this poor excuse of a hospital!!!!!

  4. Anonymous says:

    Anthony Eden needs to get out of Public Office. I have never seen a more useless Minister. OH wait… all of the PPM is pretty useless.

  5. noname says:

    Rumour is they’ve already told some of the staff that wages may be deferred or reduced in the coming months, so it’s likely that any donations will have to fill the deficit the Hospital finds itself in.

  6. Anonymous says:

    How can the Public know how the donations are being spent that they are donating?  Is there open and transparent information and accountability given at all times available to the Public as to exactly how the donations are being spent???   Or will there be no transparency and accountability to the Public???

  7. Anonymous says:

    How about providing some financial statements? People must donate money to the HSA and they operate so slackly? Are they serious?