Grenada is pushing forward with a landmark overhaul of its public hospital system, as a specialized transition team works to deliver modernized governance legislation that addresses longstanding gaps in the island nation’s outdated health care regulatory framework. The Hospital Statutorisation Transition Team (HSTT), which has been steering the reform process for more than a year, confirmed that the 1998 Hospitals Authority Act—currently the law governing public health facilities—fails to meet contemporary standards for governance, financial management, and data protection, and cannot adequately support the planned staff transition required for the new system.
The HSTT laid out its detailed roadmap for the transition at an official press conference held on Wednesday, 19 August 2026, where it shared the latest progress on legislative, administrative, and operational preparations for the full statutorisation of the public hospital network. The foundational policy draft was finalized in June 2026, followed by a month of initial stakeholder consultations in July, and formal legislative drafting kicked off earlier this month. The first full version of the bill is expected to be completed by the end of September, with the team targeting introduction to the parliamentary session scheduled for October. If the legislation progresses through the parliamentary process on schedule, HSTT Chairperson Lucia Livingston-Andand explained, full implementation of the new system could launch as early as the first half of 2027. Livingston-Andall emphasized that the final timeline remains contingent on parliamentary review and approval.
This reform effort builds on a decades-long history of attempts to update Grenada’s hospital governance rules. The 1953 Hospital Act was repealed and replaced by the 1998 Hospitals Authority Act, which established the Grenada Hospital Authority to oversee and manage all public hospital services. When fully enacted, the new legislation will enable the statutorisation of six key public health facilities and services: Grenada General Hospital, Princess Alice Hospital, Princess Royal Hospital, Mt Gay Psychiatric Hospital, the centralized Hospital Laundry Services, and the Central Medical Stores. Officials stress that passage of the bill will not mark the end of the transition process, with multiple phases of structural change required after legislation is approved.
Health Minister Hon. Philip Telesford framed the reform as a carefully designed corporatisation of public hospital services, explaining that the new statutory model will grant participating facilities greater operational autonomy while retaining full public ownership and maintaining mandatory public accountability. According to Telesford, this structural shift will allow hospitals to operate with improved agility, greater operational efficiency, and more responsiveness to patient and community needs.
This latest attempt at statutorisation comes after an earlier effort launched under the 1998 Act, which passed through Parliament but was never fully implemented. The HSTT identified a series of missteps that derailed the previous initiative, including inadequate pre-transition planning, insufficient input from key stakeholders, and unresolvable legal, constitutional, and industrial relations challenges tied to the transition of public sector workers to the new statutory body.
To avoid repeating these past failures, the HSTT has adopted a deliberate, inclusive approach to the transition process. Over the past 16 months, the team has held more than 30 stakeholder working sessions and split its work across five specialized thematic working groups to address every aspect of the reform. The Cabinet has already approved a three-phase transition plan to guide the process: the first phase concludes with the passage of the enabling legislation; the second covers the appointment of the new statutory body’s Board of Directors, executive leadership team, and core staff; the third and final phase involves the full transfer of all hospital assets, liabilities, and personnel to the new governing body.
Parallel to legislative work, the government has already begun restructuring hospital management to prepare for the transition. Telesford confirmed that recruitment is currently underway for an Interim Chief Executive Officer to lead the transition management, while a Director of Human Resources and Chief Engineer have already been hired to fill key new roles. Additional senior positions that are currently being sourced include a Financial Controller and a Chief Technology Officer, to support the system’s upcoming digital transformation.
Stakeholder engagement has been a core priority from the earliest stages of the process: formal discussions with trade unions representing workers at affected facilities launched in June 2025 and are still ongoing, while internal stakeholder consultations got underway in March 2026. Formal engagement with external stakeholders kicked off on the same day as the press conference, 19 August, with additional public consultations and townhall-style community meetings planned in the coming months to gather public input. The new legislation is also being designed to align with other major ongoing health sector reforms across Grenada, including Project Polaris, the rollout of national health insurance, and the broader digital transformation of the country’s health care system.