The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme’s project manager yesterday said he expects the number of primary care providers to “easily hit 150-200”, which would “more than cover” the number of Bahamians expected enrol.

Speaking with Tribune Business, Dr Delon Brennen said: “I think we have the ability to attract the majority of the primary care providers that are in the country.

“We estimate that there are just over 300 primary care providers who would be eligible to provide primary care services under NHI. Right now we’re hitting about the 100 mark.”

About 60 primary care doctors from the private sector signed up for NHI initially, representing just under 20 per cent of the total number of registered primary physicians.

A listing of NHI primary care providers, dated May 3, shows that the number of private physicians has remained at around 60, with their number supplemented by public sector doctors to get to Dr Brennen’s 100 figure.

However, Tribune Business was shown that several doctors were named twice on the May 3 list, with one named three times.

And the Medical Association of the Bahamas (MAB) president, Sy Pierre,  last week told this newspaper he was seeking to clarify which doctors have signed on for NHI, given that he had been contacted by physicians who said their names were on the list without their consent.  

Dr Brennen declined to directly address this yesterday, although medical industry sources alleged that the NHI Secretariat is refusing to remove doctors who claim they never consented to signing up for the scheme.

This newspaper was told that the NHI Secretariat considers all public sector doctors as having automatically signed up, given that they are employed by the Government, and is inviting private physicians who want their names removed to come in and meet with it.

Dr Brennen, meanwhile, expressed optimism that as the NHI programme grows within the public and private sector, more doctors will sign-on.

“As the programme grows we could easily get about 150-200 of those providers and, once we hit those levels, we would more than cover the number of patients we expect to be enrolled in the programme so we won’t run out of physician capacity,” Dr Brennen said.

“If we could get all 300-plus primary care providers involved in the system we will do that because we don’t want to restrict that at all.”

According to Dr Brennen, the roll-out of NHI has been “better than expected”, with almost 9,000 persons having been enrolled to-date. 

“Initially we had signed-up in excess of 60 of our private providers, and now we are into in excess of 100 providers total who would have been able to get on to the programme,” he reiterated.

“We have another 40-50 providers in our pipelines as we bring on our Family  Island providers, and we bring on more private providers and public sector providers in the capital.”