St. John residents were invited on Thursday to eat and meet top officials of the Schneider Regional Medical Center at the island’s first Dinner with a Doctor event. Organizers said they hoped to use the occasion to share insights on how health care is delivered on island.
That task fell to Dr. Joseph DeJames, who has provided medical care to St. John residents and visitors at the Myrah Keating Smith Clinic for more than a quarter century. About two dozen participants took seats in the Cleone Creque Legislative Chambers to hear the presentation.
Participants also heard from Schneider Regional’s leader of facilities and capital development, Darryl Smalls, who is responsible for the reconstruction of the territory’s hospitals and medical centers.
Medical Center Chief Executive Tina Comissiong welcomed all of those who joined the Thursday event, including relatives of the clinic’s namesake. “The monthly Dinner with a Doctor event is our chance to have open dialogue, to increase awareness about important health topics and to empower our community through shared knowledge,” Comissiong said.
DeJames took a moment to acknowledge Myrah Keating Smith. “She was one of the original health care providers here. She was trained as a midwife in the United States, but she had a much wider role than just being a midwife taking care of pregnant women,” he said.
DeJames commended the St. John clinic staff and said in many ways they uphold the spirit of doing more with less. Audience members, including Senate Health Committee Chair Sen. Ray Fonseca, asked the doctor what the clinic lacked.
He said there are times when resources are not as abundant as they could be; that’s when decisions on what and how to allocate come into play.
When it was his turn to speak, Smalls said the old Keating Clinic building would be replaced with facilities designed to be self-sustaining for 30 days. The new clinic would also meet the same standards as other hospitals and medical centers in the Virgin Islands and be built to last for at least 50 years.
Smalls also told the St. John group that a contractor had been identified to get the reconstruction project started, but the work protocols still had to be finalized.
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