Shetty buys land for hospital
(CNS): Despite widespread speculation that Dr Devi Shetty’s plans to build a health city in Cayman were on hold, the internationally renowned surgeon has completed the purchase of 200 acres, according to his local project director, signaling that the project is still on track. Gene Thompson said the documents have been signed and the Indian doctor has bought 200 acres of land at High Rock in East End from land owner Joseph Imparato for the future Narayana hospital. The local representative also revealed that Imparato will be involved in developing the supporting elements of the planned site.
“This is a large step forward for the project,” Thompson said regarding the completed land transaction. “We are beginning our survey work as well as the initial mechanical design work, which will include energy-efficient technology throughout.”
The High Rock land was recently earmarked to become a commercial seaport but when the proposal failed to gain local support, Imparato revealed that he would be willing to sell the land to Shetty for his health project. In total Imparato owns around 600 acres in the area, which is one the highest elevated sites on Grand Cayman offering natural protection against flooding and storm surges.
Under this deal the doctor has acquired only a third of the land but Thompson said he has an option to purchase more as needs demand.
Imparato will serve as co-developer of the overall site with Dr Shetty, Thompson revealed. City Services (Cayman) Ltd, which is Imparato’s firm, will be working in conjunction with the heart surgeon and his team on site preparation and the long-term development of the project.
Although City Services will not construct the buildings that will actually make up the medical complex, Imparato said, it will participate in developing support facilities, such as hotels and residential accommodations.
City Services is working closely with Dr Shetty’s Cayman team on a master plan for the project to ensure an integrated, attractive and well-coordinated healthcare community, according to a release from Shetty’s spokesperson.
Shetty’s plans to kick start medical tourism in the Cayman Islands have been on the drawing board for more than two years. The doctor signed an official MOU with the local government in April 2010 requiring a number of legislative changes in order to facilitate his vision for the health city in exchange for the investment.
Government has since passed the health practitioners bill and a medical compensation law to limit damages in order to help Shetty keep insurance costs down and in turn the cost of the health care to be provided at the facility. The land purchase is the first major commitment on Shetty’s part, demonstrating that the planned hospital could become a reality.
The first phase is expected to be a small hospital but over the next 10 to 15 years Shetty has said he plans to roll out other elements, including a tertiary-care hospital, an educational facility, an assisted-care community and a biotech research center.
Category: Health
On the surface this sound like a good deal but I would like to know where do we expect to get the majority of the medical tourists at this facility from? At best the USA, I would assume but given the malpractice cap do you really believe Americans will not take that and other factors into consideration. I wish this project well and hope that it will work out in the best interest of the developers and the many Caymanians and other who will depend on it for their livelihood. I can see all Caymanian finding jobs, having their empty apartments occupied by renters, real estate selling at a premium again, life will be like it was in the 80"s and most of the 90. This hospital will be the best thing since the Ritz-Carlton and Camana Bay.
Another idiotic pipe dream…this project cannot be profitable.
One assumes Shetty did his financial analysis for his last project and that led him to build a 1400 bed hospital in Bangalore with a population of over 6 million.
So how can he profitably do a 2,000 bed hospital in Grand Cayman? I would love to see the feasibility study Shetty did to come up with this plan.
Again — everyone needs to read — http://sites.google.com/site/cppicayman/the-shetty-mou
well done…..how can the most expensive island in the carribbean be the future of low cost medical care???????
but how is Cayman going to develop medical tourism as a potential third economic pillar when they have given Shetty a monopoly on the market? Idiocy!
But how is this a good idea??
So we get a couple months of construction work and maybe 4-5 small Caymanian contractors get a job (maybe) for a minute, thats IT?!!
It's good news for Caymanian surgeons
Are there any?
What rubbish.
As usual idiot Caymanians are building a project which it does not own.
I have no idea why we prefer working for other people but never want anything for ourselves other than the crumbs.
Presumably if you had the skills and the desire you could do anything you wanted, just like these people are doing. The question is what’s stopping you? It’s yourIsland and you can do whatever you want with it, so how come YOU didn’t go build a hospital? Yes, I mean YOU! Let’s start with an honest answer to that and we’ll see where it takes us.
This hospital is what we need! The combination of medicinal and tourism industries is a great mix and I find that it will come out successful. We're all together til the end – oh, a change is coming! God bless readers of this site, and as well to the writers of these articles that I enjoy reading when possible.
Este hospital es lo que se necesita. La dualidad de turismo y medicina es una buena mezcla y saldrá exitosa, yo sé. Un cambio viene…juntos todos estamos hasta el fin. Qué dios les bendiga, lectores de este sitio web! Y también a los que escriben estos artículos que me gusta leer tanto en mi ocio.
Este hospital é necessária. A dualidade do turismo médico é uma mistura boa e será bem sucedido, eu sei. A mudança está chegando … estamos todos juntos até o fim. Deus os abençoe, os leitores deste site! E aqueles que escrevem esses artigos que eu gosto de ler muito na minha lazer.
María José Da Silva
Mexican Brasilian Journalist.
Lets get it on. Good news for everyone involved.
Oh dear. Looks like all those trickle down investment opportunities for the wider public just trickled away. Sound familiar?
If you sit down and say its gone and do nothing, dont invest in something yourself, you will not get any trickle down as you will have nothing to catch the trickle.
Start a business, sell t-Shirts, rent some paddle boats, kayaks, sell some swanky, whompas, cassava cake, thatch hats and you will get more business when this starts, thats how you get the trickle down, not by sitting down and watching it pass you by.
I did. Hundreds of thousands in rental properties – but now the co developer seems to be building associated infrastructure to compete. Fair enough – but it will result in much of the benefit staying in an extremely small circle. Whompas and straw hats it is then…should be able to support a family on that.
Looks like that wasnt such a good idea after all. You should have diversified your portfolio to minimize risk instead just building apartments. Eggs in one basket and all that.
Whew, praise the Lord.
Did someone at some in sensitive hospital forget to tell him about "Penny Medical". Also If you aren't employed and have no means of paying for treatment the hospital will file the form and get reimbursed by medicaid.
Premier McKeeva Bush and UDP members: I thank God for all of your efforts and I truly hope by God's grace that Narayana hospital will become ministry of healing to thousands of visitors as well as locals on the island. I thank Doctor Devi Shetty for the vision and potentials he saw in the Cayman Islands. What a beautiful name for a hospital, Narayana, meaning the "The Supreme Being who is the Foundation of All Men"
Thanks for providing the funding for the Hospital. You are a true investor. How many years do we have to wait for this Hospital?
What in the h*ll is wrong with you people, what was contained in this contribution to vote thumbs down or laugh out loud?
Some of the negative or hateful readers of these blogs really need some help as they are hurting units.
Somehow mentioning UDP + Premier + Thanking God does not sit well with the populous who will probably be Thanking God the day he and his cronies are voted out of office. My best guess.
Sadly enough with all the crap the UDP government has done since it's taking office anything that they actually do that is good will be viewed with skepticism. You also must appreciate that most of the people here have always seen one side of the coin and then kringe when we see the other side. So it is only HUMAN NATURE now to be skeptical.
I for one supported this project because I see the upside of this for Cayman. I do fear how it will all be managed however. We are giving up alot and we need to protect what we are due to get to ensure we do in fact get that.
Excellent news! Get it started asap
Good, hopefully this will boost East End economy without destroying that marvelous view!!
what a surprise the Joe Imperato had managed to find an alternative use for that land!
Yuh think ???!!! That's why those guys make the big money, they are normally way ahead of us.
It goes like this:
"Lets spend a few bucks a push a dock, by the time i am finished with them they will approve anything to be built here"
And when Cuba is open for everybody in a few years, that will be the end of it.
It will be the end of Cayman as we know it. I can't wait . . . . . . . .
We can't wait for you to go can you make it sooner ? Please ……….
This is big part of our problem. Too many people here who wish us evil.
Everyone saying when Cuba is open for business Cayman will sink, tourism will fail etc etc. HAVE YOU SEEN CUBA RECENTLY? The piles of garbage of the roads, the deteriorating buildings, roads, lakes that look like cesspools, everywhere smells like urine, droves of flies.
Cuba would need trillions of dollars worth of investment in 5 years time to get to Cayman's level. The whole Caribbeanand nearly all of South America is open besides Cuba and Cayman is still getting the big players.
I agree, its no time to sit pretty so I am thankfull to Government, UDP or PPM, for getting projects like this going. So thanks Big Mac.
Lets get this hospital going. Next thing is the cruise port.
the way you describe cuba could also be applied to cayman……..read it again….
Do you know something we don't know about Cuba opening up? You got a hotline to Fidel or Raul?
Let me say I would agree with you that Cayman will face some severe challenges IF and WHEN this does happen but honestly I could die of old age and this situation might not change. Let's be clear the Cuba issue did not happen last week, Last month, Last Year and Last Decade for that matter. I am 40 plus years old and this pre-dates me.
So unless you have some insider info that you would like to share I suggest you throw this where I threw half of UDP ideas. File 13 thru 50. As you would imagine 13 couldn't hold all the crap.
I'm 60 years old.
I saw the fall of the Wall and the re-unification of Berlin up front. I saw the USSR turn into the CIS and then into the current Russian Federation. I saw Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Poland and even Albania move away from Communism. I saw Yugoslavia break up in civil war and Czechoslovakia peacefully split up in 1993.
I was out there and the changes have to be seen to be believed. Look at what just happened in the Middle East – you have no idea what is going to happen in Cuba or how fast it might happen.
Another poster has correctly pointed out that much of Cuba is a third-world s**thole but the country has still attracted massive European and Canadian investment, boasting some of the best package holiday resorts in the whole Caribbean. I can tell you from personal experience that, value for money, Cuba has already got Cayman beaten.
When Obama does the deal with Raul Castro (or whoever takes power from him) and opens up Cuba to US investors, US tourists, the cruise industry and whatever else if I was Shetty I'd head North because one thing Cuba has, with a bit of help, is the capability to take the whole medical tourism industry and turn it on it's head.
There you go.
hope i'm wrong but it seems like more smoke and mirrors ….
imparato owns the land, becomes co-developer, the co-developer now owns the land again….
the lack of detail in the article is truly worrying….after two and half years we still have no financing, no planning and no start date…..
You obviously have no idea of financing and investments. A development and partnership of this magnitude just does not happen overnight. This is a huge undertaking that is going to cost a pile of money – they obviously have to make sure that they both have the same vision and that the money will be properly invested and be profitable. People dont work hard for their money to just piss it away. Thank you to these brave men who have our Islands and their prosperity at heart. May you and this project be richly blessed and may it succeed.
I work extremely hard for my money just to piss it away, you obviously are the one who has no idea.