DOCTORS Hospital plans to invest in excess of $1 million to re-open its Western Medical Plaza facility, its president telling Tribune Business yesterday that the move could ultimately create up to 75 new jobs.

Barry Rassin said the Blake Road facility would "fit right in" to the BISX-listed company's medical tourism and international outpatient program, given its proximity to Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) and relatively secluded location.

With some 16 per cent of Doctors Hospital's business coming from non-Bahamians, the BISX-listed health care provider is attempting to make serious inroads into that area and increase its proportion of foreign patients to 50 per cent.

Doctor's Hospital closed Western Medical Plaza almost nine years ago due to a downturn in the economy. The company first attempted to sell it, but several potential deals fell through, and subsequently chose to lease it out to other medical services providers.

Re-opening under a new name, the full service hospital will provide an emergency care unit to service the expanded population that now lives and works in western New Providence, as well as provide elective ambulatory surgery services for international patients seeking treatment in the Bahamas.

Globally, medical tourism is a $2 billion-a-year industry, and Doctors Hospital continues to receive an increasing number of inquiries about elective procedures available to international patients.

Mr Rassin told Tribune Business yesterday: "This is going to fit right in to our international patient program, because then we could bring our international patients into a quieter facility instead of into the acute care facility, so they have a greater feeling of personal service in that facility.