Heart disease continues to hold the grim title of the leading cause of death in The Bahamas, a situation made more dangerous by the large number of residents unknowingly living with the condition until it reaches a life-threatening stage, according to Dr. Sheena Antonio-Collie, Chief Medical Officer of Doctors Hospital.
Dr. Antonio-Collie’s public warning comes alongside an announcement from the private healthcare provider that it has carried out nearly 70 cardiac catheterization procedures since restarting the service this past February. This critical interventional tool allows clinicians to both diagnose and clear blocked coronary arteries before they can trigger fatal heart attacks or progressive heart failure.
Cardiac catheterization works by giving medical teams direct, real-time access to examine the blood vessels that supply the heart muscle. During the procedure, clinicians can also remove dangerous plaque buildup that narrows arteries and is the primary root cause of most major cardiac events. Referrals for the service come through multiple channels: Doctors Hospital’s own primary care network, its emergency department, and external referring physicians across the country.
Beyond the interventional procedures, the hospital has also expanded its preventative cardiac screening efforts. “We’ve performed just under 70 catheterisations, and we’ve seen several hundred patients go through cardiac calcium score testing,” Dr. Antonio-Collie explained. Notably, a number of patients who showed arterial plaque buildup during routine preventative screening required catheterization even though they had not experienced any telltale symptoms of heart disease.
This finding underscores a key public health challenge in the country: “The unfortunate thing is a lot of people are walking around with heart disease and have no idea that they have heart disease,” Dr. Antonio-Collie said. Beyond the risk to individual patients, untreated asymptomatic heart disease also creates a massive, avoidable strain on The Bahamas’ entire healthcare system. Without early intervention, patients with unmanaged heart disease face frequent, repeated hospital admissions that consume limited care resources.
“In terms of the burden on the health system, it’s a very high burden because oftentimes without certain types of intervention, patients are in and out of the hospital very, very frequently because of heart disease,” she added. For individual patients, the long-term impacts are also severe: many require lifelong medication, and progressive heart disease can reduce mobility, robbing people of their ability to work and care for their families as they once did.
Against this backdrop, Doctors Hospital has centered preventative care as the core of its strategic approach to improving population health outcomes, and early data from chronic disease management programs shows promising results. Sherzel Smith, executive director of the hospital’s Outpatient Centre, shared that 70 percent of patients diagnosed with hypertension achieved lower blood pressure at follow-up visits after following customized treatment plans that included integrated nutrition and lifestyle management support.
The intervention model has also delivered striking results for patients at risk of type 2 diabetes: 90 percent of patients identified as pre-diabetic no longer fell into that high-risk category after targeted intervention. “That is critical because those are persons who, instead of going down a road of an illness that we know contributes heavily to our morbidity and our mortality, that progression has been reversed through the intervention of our physicians, the support of lifestyle management, targeted medications, and other tools,” Smith explained.
Smith emphasized that routine annual physical examinations remain the most critical entry point for catching silent chronic conditions early. These regular check-ins give clinicians the chance to detect emerging health issues long before they progress into life-threatening emergencies that require costly, intensive care.
Looking ahead, Doctors Hospital projects it will conduct roughly 10,000 annual physical examinations this year, as part of a total projected 44,000 to 50,000 outpatient visits across its nine clinic locations spread across New Providence, Grand Bahama, and Exuma. The hospital’s expansive outpatient network offers a full spectrum of services, including primary care, preventative screening, specialist clinics, urgent care, on-site laboratory testing, advanced imaging, and in-house pharmacy services.
Dennis Deveaux, chief executive officer of Doctors Hospital, noted that overall patient intake has grown by roughly eight percent year over year, a trend that reflects rising public demand for accessible, high-quality outpatient and preventative care. The hospital now expects to hit the upper end of its projection, with up to 50,000 total outpatient visits this year, including between 8,000 and 10,000 annual physicals, which carry an average cost of $370 per exam.
In addition to serving local residents, the hospital’s outpatient clinics at the Baha Mar resort and Royal Beach Club also cater to the local employee population and international tourists, who account for roughly 2,000 outpatient visits annually.