As the Grand Court prepares to hear a legal challenge relating to the hiring of ‘institutionally registered’ medical practitioners, the Cayman Islands Medical and Dental Society has launched a campaign encouraging people to educate themselves about which medical staff are on the traditional ‘Principal List’ and which are on the ‘Institutional List’.
Until about a decade ago, only medical professionals who had qualifications from one of seven countries – Australia, Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States – could register to practise in Cayman.
With Dr. Devi Shetty’s Health City on the horizon at that stage, the law was amended to create an additional list, called the ‘Institutional List’, which would allow medical practitioners with qualifications from other jurisdictions to work in medical tourism facilities on island.
In the upcoming judicial review, Doctors Hospital, which brought the legal challenge under the name CTMH Holdings, will claim that institutionally registered medical professionals are practising in Cayman without having to adhere to the same criteria as healthcare workers on the Principal List who operate in other facilities.
It wants the Cayman Islands government to formulate criteria for designating an institution as a place at which ‘institutionally registered’ practitioners may be employed, to review such designation, and publish a ‘transparent document’ of the criteria.
The judicial review begins on Wednesday, 20 April, and is expected to last three days.
The Cayman Islands Medical and Dental Society, whose membership includes only professionals on the Principal List, opposed the plan to create two separate lists of practitioners as far back as 2011 when the issue was debated in the Legislative Assembly. At the time, the government was working on amending a number of laws that would help pave the way for the establishment of Health City.
The CIMDS, in a press release issued last week, stated that it was launching an educational campaign called the Principal List Identification Programme “to establish public awareness about the politically driven creation of two separate registration lists of healthcare providers”.
It said it had devised a ‘Green Tick Initiative’ allowing practitioners to display an easily identifiable logo representing their registration on the Principal List.
A pamphlet issued by the organisation states, “In order to make informed healthcare choices for you and your family, you should have an understanding of the system and a clear way to identify Principal List providers. This is why the CIMDS is introducing the Principal List Identification Programme (PLIP). You can be assured that your healthcare provider or facility has a Principal List affiliation if you see the green check.”
The list of Principal and Institutional medical practitioners can be found here.
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Do we need lists, is it not self evident that if you are employed at Health City you are Institutional?.
For us that conduct medical research throughout the world it is critical that only qualified doctors and associated practitioners treat patients. I fell that the list of qualified countries (Australia, Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States) is woefully incomplete. The most important point is to have a Caymanian confident that only qualified people treat them for their illness. The point may arise – did Health City employ physicians that are not qualified to treat people. Just because these physicians are not educated from the qualified countries does not mean they do not know what they are doing or cannot communicate their directions to the staff and patients. Towards that end we who live in Grand Cayman want that assurance. I recommend that the staff who was not qualified in one of those 7 countries be tested for their competency. This is done in the US as a foreign practioner is evaluated accordingly.
Going forward i fell this is critical so we do not lose quality care while at the same time have those clinicians at Health City and Aster prove to us they are qualified. This testing needs to be done by an outside group to remove bias in the evaluation of competency.