Who We Are:

The Consortium for Health and Educational Excellence in the Virgin Islands is a telemedicine collaborative effort seamlessly conducted by four companies who are dedicated to improving the health care outcomes and quality of life for residents of the United States Virgin Islands by offering sustainable solutions to health care access, delivery, and continuing health education using sustainable technology. 

This collaborative effort offers a best practice mix of health care, education and technology keenly focused on what is appropriate, available, affordable, reliable, and sustainable.

Consortium Mission: To provide sustainable access to health care and educational services anywhere there is a cell phone.

Consortium Goals:

1. Establish information technology that is reliable, accessible, and sustainable

2. Show how broadband infrastructure, access, and digital literacy are super-determinants of health with profound impacts on health outcomes.

3. Examine disparities in technology access and literacy impacting remote, rural and underserved communities, explore the challenges and solutions raised during the COVID-19 pandemic.

4. Develop access to tutoring service for students 2 thru 12 including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)

5. Extend coordination, commitment, and placement of health care provider students for clinical studies in behavioral medicine and women’s health developing a sustainable base for future health care

6. Evaluate current initiatives and explore inclusive program models that leverage digital innovation to ensure health access including consultation with medical specialists focusing on underserved populations.

7. Deliver continuous evaluation of our quality and service using external evaluators with specific national expertise

8. Assist academic institutions and governmental agencies throughout the Caribbean with information technology, health education and health access.

9. Address health equity through community based focus groups, participation in concert with infrastructure and funding potentials brought on by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act..     

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Need:

Residents of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) have long faced many barriers to accessing health care services, among them geographic remoteness from the US mainland, the high cost of travel and telecommunications, island populations separated by open ocean, differing political and cultural environments, and most seriously a critical shortage of both primary and subspecialty care especially behavioral care health services.

The health care system struggles to deliver essential access and delivery services to the Territory’s population of women, children, homeless and elderly residents. The closure of the Hovensa oil refinery in St. Croix 2012 decimated the economy.  In addition to lost homes and business structures, destructive hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 wreaked further financial havoc and increased the prevalence of anxiety, depression and PTSD, further preexisting problems with substance abuse, HIV/AIDS illness, and domestic violence. 

Just as the Territory was beginning to recover, the COVID-19 pandemic occurred and is overwhelming Juan F. Luis and Roy Lester Schneider hospitals and causing an overburdened health care system to implode.  Currently, the American Virgin Islands are facing a health care crisis as is the rest of the world.  In February 11, 2022 there were 32,706 Covid-19 tests performed in the American Virgin Islands. This includes St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. Johns. St. Croix had over 7,000 positive tests and then suffered 44 fatalities. The islands saw 7,207 patients recover. As of March 2022, there were 155 active cases.

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Barriers:

A focus group of individuals in the American Virgin Islands addressed the challenges and perceptions of health and health care in the islands and reported that “there are barriers to good health that can be addressed by better professional training and education. There was concern that health care providers from the U.S. mainland were not culturally competent, and about significant provider-patient communication obstacles based on patients’ use of language that providers may misunderstand.”

 They also reported that overall trust and confidence in the health system is markedly low; concern for confidentiality is high. Part of the problem stems from insufficient training for health professionals. In part this may be because health care staff who are overworked and underpaid can become careless, but the comments indicate that some concerns with confidentiality stem from living in an island community where everyone seems to know everyone else.

They also felt that these barriers could be addressed by better coordination, planning, and/or financing. Included here is confusion about where best to go to receive specific health services and doubt about the range and limits of services provided by the Department of Health. Some participants did not know which problems were best treated in local clinics or physicians’ offices vs. hospital emergency rooms.[1]

[1] Callwood, G. B. Campbell, D. Gary, F. Radelet, M. Health and Health Care in the U.S. Virgin Islands: Challenges and Perceptions. ABNF J. 23 (1) Winter, 2012.