A big heart needs no gratitude
SEVERE chest pains guided 48-year-old Beverly Lewis’ faltering steps to the Heart Institute of the Caribbean headquarters on Balmoral Avenue in Kingston last Thursday.
This could easily have been the end of the road for her but for a medical team who decided to give her a second chance at life, free of cost.
It started when a concerned nurse who, after administering an electrocardiogram to Lewis, saw abnormalities and called a doctor. One look confirmed that she was having unstable coronary syndrome, meaning there was extreme tightening of the blood vessels circulating in the heart putting her at risk of sudden death.
Quick action and compassionate thinking saved the day for the woman, who could have instead been referred to the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) for treatment and who would not have been able to foot the US$2,280 the procedure would cost.
But founder, chairman and chief executive officer for the centre, Dr Ernest Madu, says saving a life takes precedence over costs when it comes to life and death situations.
“Immediately we took her to the CAT lab and did the angiogram, found the blockage, opened it up and put a stem there. The cardiac catheterisation alone was US$2,880.
We gave it completely free to her. She is scheduled to come back and get an angioplasty done, which she hopes that some of her family members will assist her with and we will underwrite the remaining portion of it,” he told the Sunday Observer.
Madu says underwriting costs is something the Heart Institute does everyday.
“Everyday we underwrite several patients, we do it daily,” he tells the Sunday Observer.
The CEO said the Institute has set up an Open Access programme which exists simply to make sure “no one is denied treatment because of lack of money”.
“We try to cover everyone but it is particularly designed for those who do not have the funds. We have them enrolled in the programme and we will finance the cost of their treatment,” he explains.
And for those who are not enrolled there is still hope.
“The second aspect is that if someone has a life threatening condition and shows up here we will give them whatever treatment. We don’t worry about the money,” he says.
It is a ‘gamble’ he notes, but the Institute has no intention of taking its chips off the table even though its benevolence has been taken advantage of at times.
“Of course it is a very risky gamble because we have had individuals who have done it and when they get better they never show up again,” Madu says.
The Institute has gone even further in the bid to save lives.
“We have a young woman we are trying to track down to give an ICD defibrillator. A defibrillator is for persons who are at risk of sudden death. The cost of that is about US$31 to US$35,000. Unfortunately, we have not been able to make her come back. We have placed calls to her and left several messages to say bring whatever you have we will underwrite it completely,” Madu shares.
“Every day there must be someone who is poor and unable to afford their care and we always accommodate them. We also have a government concession programme where people who can pay something, but not all can go to the senior medical officer of any public hospital and they will be assisted,” he adds.
In the meantime, Dr Madu is concerned about the number of Jamaicans who have hearts that are less than whole.
“It is common. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death and disability in Jamaica so one out of six Jamaicans is thought to have diabetes which is a major risk factor for coronary artery disease and high blood pressure is another risk factor. It’s very prevalent,” he notes.
Madu is also concerned about the number of persons with heart disease who would not necessarily be thought to be at risk.
“We have had a 19-year-old woman who came in but was pretty far gone, blood clots all over the place, we had plans for her but it was already too late,” he says.
According to the CEO, “the public needs to be aware of the fact that many of these conditions are treatable but you have to get to the right place to be treated”.
Furthermore, he says medical practitioners “need to be more proactive in referring the patient to the right place to get treated”.
Meanwhile, he notes that in making sure that the best quality health care is available to everyone in Jamaica – irrespective of their financial status – the Institute is developing a partnership with charity group, Food for the Poor to put community service clinics in all 14 parishes.
“This is something that is a community-based initiative to make sure that old people and so on don’t have to travel to Kingston for treatment. Sometimes the cost of coming to Kingston, they don’t have it. I expect that very soon we will launch it and between the Heart Institute and Food for the Poor we will underwrite the cost of these clinics,” Madu tells the Sunday Observer.
The CEO says the estimated cost to set up each facility/clinic is US$30,000.
As to where the clinics will be set up he says, the plans are in the initial stage but is optimistic that the facilities can be rolled out before summer of next year.
“We will identify locations in each parish and get office space in hospitals, health centres, or if a doctor has enough space and he is able to lease space to us,” he says.
“We don’t have any agreement with any hospital as yet, but we plan to set up in a hospital, clinic, health centre or private clinic as long as we are able to lease the space and link all those offices to our central office here in Kingston,” he notes.
In the meantime, he says the Institute has put a cardiologist in Manchester, which is the centre of the island, to ensure that people do not have to travel to Kingston unnecessarily.
The Heart Institute serves as the center of excellence for cardiovascular diseases (CVD), occupational health, diabetes care and general internal medicine in the West Indies. It provides expert diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular and general medical conditions and consultative opinion locally and also remotely via a network of specialists linked by a global telemedical network.
These services were previously not available in Jamaica and the only option for patients in the region is to seek or procure such services in the USA, particularly in Florida.