The government’s own National Health Strategy confirms what healthcare workers and patients across The Bahamas have been experiencing for years, that the real crisis in our healthcare system is not buildings, but people.
While the Davis-Cooper administration continues to promote plans for a new hospital, their own strategy admits that existing facilities are already under severe strain, with aging infrastructure, persistent bed shortages at Princess Margaret Hospital, uneven maintenance across clinics, fragmented digital systems, and no unified national telehealth framework to support care across our islands.
Most concerning is the strategy’s assessment of the healthcare workforce, which acknowledges routine recruitment delays, weak retention incentives, the steady migration of trained nurses and physicians, and the reality that several Family Islands still have no resident doctors, all while a large portion of senior clinicians approach retirement and the country still lacks a national health human resources plan.
Against that backdrop, the government continues to push the idea that a new hospital will solve these problems, despite offering no clear staffing model, no recruitment and retention strategy, and no timeline for building the workforce required to operate new facilities when existing ones are already severely understaffed.
A hospital without doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals is an expensive promise without a plan, and expanding physical infrastructure without stabilizing staffing will only deepen burnout, widen service gaps, and increase inefficiency throughout the system. Fundamental question remains unanswered: Who will staff these facilities? And how will The Bahamas recruit, train, and retain the healthcare professionals needed to deliver care?
Instead of addressing these questions, the government continues to rely on outsourcing nurses and healthcare workers, a costly and unstable approach that fails to build long-term capacity and leaves the country vulnerable to ongoing shortages.
The Free National Movement has been consistent in calling for a different approach, one that prioritizes people before buildings, invests in competitive compensation and retention incentives, strengthens training pipelines for Bahamians, and delivers a national workforce plan with clear timelines and accountability.
Bahamians deserve a healthcare system that is staffed, functional, and resilient, and until this government confronts the workforce crisis it now openly acknowledges, no new hospital will deliver the care our people deserve.