Senators Concerned About Slow Hospital Rebuild, Emergency Wait Times, and Delayed Income

Sen. Ray Fonseca was saying look at the bright side. “The territory is getting two new hospitals and a cancer treatment facility on St. John.” Sen. Kenneth Gittens, however, approached it differently at Wednesday’s Committee on Health, Hospitals, and Human Services meeting.

He said he was very disappointed at the reports he was hearing from Doug Koch, chief executive officer of Juan F. Luis Hospital, and Darryl Smalls, executive director of the Territorial Hospital Redevelopment Team. Gittens pointed out that it had been years since the hurricanes of 2017 had destroyed the hospitals, and demolition of some of the buildings had not even commenced.

Smalls testified on the recovery efforts in transitioning the Gov. Juan F. Luis Hospital to the temporary JFL North facility, the permanent St. Croix hospital building, and the construction and development of the Charlotte Kimelman Cancer Institute and the Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center. He said demolition of the damaged JFL hospital building should be started by the end of this calendar year, and building the new hospital would take over five years.

Smalls said many stateside government entities replaced storm-destroyed facilities immediately and then filed for reimbursement from FEMA. He said the Virgin Islands did not have the resources to do it that way and had to get all the FEMA approvals for funds before it could proceed with a project. He added that FEMA called his office every day requesting more information.