The Government of Grenada has signed a nine-month contract with Miami-based firm, Joint Independent Provider Association, (JIPA), to complete the process of development for implementation of the National Health Insurance Programme.
Grenada’s Prime Minister, Dr. Rt. Hon. Keith Mitchell has hailed this historic agreement with JIPA, which took effect on October 29, 2019, as a “game-changer for the healthcare system, given the many challenges faced by that system, throughout our history.”
According to the Prime Minister, “healthcare is a right, and every Grenadian citizen needs to know that their right can be satisfied right here at home.”
With the new contract with JIPA, Grenada is poised to become one of only a few developing nations around the world, and in the Caribbean, to introduce a sustainable brand of National Health Insurance to its citizens.
The JIPA Network, headed by Grenadian-born and USA-trained neurologist, Dr. Kester Nedd, promises that their NHI plan will overhaul the system and sustainably address issues of cost and delivery of healthcare in Grenada.
To do so, JIPA promises to utilize its extensive experience in managing high cost, catastrophic healthcare conditions around the region, to introduce a system of “managed and value-based health care” to Grenada, which will be available to all its citizens, regardless of their ability to pay.
According to Dr. Nedd, to achieve this, JIPA will “utilize a tested and proven model, which consolidates funding and organizes healthcare providers and consumers into large groups, in which risks such as payment and care are shared across those groups. By doing so, better healthcare will be made much more affordable and accessible across all sectors of the Grenadian society.”
The “son of the soil” physician referred to JIPA’s plan as one which will “revolutionize the health system for all stakeholders: from consumers to practitioners and administrators.”
Dr. Nedd believes that JIPA’s plan for the NHI will promote better upward mobility for healthcare practitioners, which will, in turn, enable the Government to retain its much-needed, highly trained doctors, nurses and other medical personnel.
Nickolas Steele, Grenada’s Minister for Health, believes that the Government’s contract with JIPA, which builds on work already started by the University of the West Indies and other stakeholders, to eventually launch an NHI in Grenada, is a necessary step to overcoming many of the challenges that the healthcare system now faces.
According to the Minister, “if Grenadians can agree to JIPA’s team-based model, NHI will become a reality in the not too distant future, and as such, the challenges faced by a colonial system of care will finally be addressed, for present and future generations.”
Noting that better health care continues to be a national priority of the New National Party administration, the Minister expressed Government’s willingness and readiness to lend all the necessary support to JIPA in order to make NHI, which he referred to as the “great equalizer,” a reality, and deliver improved health services for all Grenadians, especially the many who cannot always afford to go abroad to have their healthcare needs met.
Over the next 9 months, JIPA has pledged to continue extensive consultations, and work with all sectors and stakeholders in Grenada to develop and finalize the necessary benefits plans, funding models and administrative processes for the implementation of the NHI.
ABOUT JIPA NETWORK
JIPA Network is an association of companies owned and operated by its participants that includes physicians, health care professionals of all types and private investors. The company’s mission is to make affordable health care available and accessible. With health care providers throughout the Caribbean, Latin America and the USA in its network, the company offers health care administrative services for health care delivery systems. JIPA offers services as a turnkey Third-Party Administrator for health systems and serves as a financial intermediary between entities that pay for care and deliver health care. JIPA Network offers modern information technology that connects facilities and providers with payers of health care for the exchange of data in real-time. In addition, it provides patient care systems and payer/employer/insurance management systems. The company offers a consolidated model, which brings payers of health care, consumers and health care providers together, in a large buying group to make health care more affordable to a larger population of persons and at lower risk.
JIPA has been involved in helping to develop or consulted on, or provided services for most of the national health insurance initiatives in the Caribbean.
