CAYMAN ISLANDS—A doctor from Massachusetts is alive today thanks to quick reactions by hotel employees, first responders and the skilled medical teams and surgeons at Health City Cayman Islands. Now he plans to partner with the facility that saved his life.
Judy Josephs, whose husband went into cardiac arrest while on a treadmill at the gym at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman last month, described the coordination of the hotel staff, many Caymanians and the Health City medical teams as a “Christmas Miracle.”
After vascular surgeon Dr. Leon Josephs collapsed, Caetano Barrato, lead loss prevention officer at the Ritz-Carlton, and other hotel employees recognized the symptoms of a cardiac event and administered CPR as well as two electric shocks before the stricken American doctor was taken to the government hospital, Cayman Islands Health Services Authority.
Once at the hospital, urgent measures were taken and arrangements were made for Josephs to be sped to Health City Cayman Islands, where he arrived unconscious and on a ventilator. “Within 30 minutes, he was taken to the cath lab and an emergency angiogram was done that showed one of the arteries was totally occluded and the other two were more than 95 percent blocked,” said Dr. Binoy Chattuparambil, senior cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon at Health City Cayman Islands.
The blood thinners Josephs was taking threatened uncontrollable bleeding, so immediate surgery was not wise. Health City doctors decided to delay surgery for 48 hours and used the time to run a battery of tests to ensure the operating team had as much information as possible by the time they started the bypass procedure.
“The surgery took around five and a half hours and he came out of the operating room in very stable condition. After he came to the ICU, within two hours he was taken off the breathing machine and his recovery was quite smooth and straightforward,” said “Dr. Binoy,” as he is widely referred to.
The Massachusetts doctor, acting CEO and vascular surgeon of Reliant Medical Group was unstinting in his praise for the medical teams at Health City: “I’m amazingly pleased with my care. I’m a vascular surgeon at home so I see plenty of patients after cardiac surgery and my care, my recovery, in my opinion, was as good or better than [anything] I’ve ever seen.
“I saw my nursing care teamed with a doctor much more than I do at home. I found my doctors to be very easy to speak with. My physical therapists [were] very involved in a team with my physicians. So I really felt that there was a team-based care here that was really focused completely on the patient being the center of that. And I really don’t think that it has anything to do with the fact that I’m a health care executive or the fact that I’m a physician. I think that’s how they treat everybody who comes through the doors of the hospital.”
After four days, Josephs was discharged from Health City. He retains positive memories of his post-operative care at the Health City campus, where the grounds are carefully landscaped by a world-class gardener.
“This actually was a beautiful recovery … the focus on patient satisfaction is visible and palpable. They live it every day and they’re really good at it,” said Josephs, who disclosed his company will consider sending some of its patients to Health City for their care, “because the model here is a model that the United States health care system is striving to get to.”