LHSS Grant Is Win-Win for Jamaica Health Provider and Locally Led, Sustainable Development
Private firm Online Medics branches out with funding and capacity strengthening support from USAID project
From an early age, medical doctor and businessman Dr. Alex Tracey was motivated to help others. “As a child, I wanted a career that would enable me to help as many people as possible, but I had no idea what that would be.” At first, he wanted to be an anthropologist, to learn about other people, their way of life, and how he could make those lives better.
As a teen, he began to hone in on his interests. He liked science and had a knack for entrepreneurship. “By high school, I knew I wanted to own a business,” he said. As a medical student at the University of the West Indies, Dr. Tracey and his mother would sew uniforms for medical students.
But it wasn’t until after he graduated that he found a way to merge his business acumen with his childhood dream of serving others. In 2018, he launched Online Medics, a mobile app to provide medical care for patients virtually — the first of its kind in Jamaica.
“I saw a need for more accessible care,” he said. “With the launch of Online Medics, clients were able to get medical assistance from the comfort of their homes and patients needing prescriptions could obtain them electronically.” The service was particularly helpful for people who had to travel long distances to see a doctor or renew a prescription.
“LHSS allowed me to think in the long term — where I wanted my company to go and what I need to do to get it there.”
Dr. Tracey had great ambitions for Online Medics, including to make it Jamaica’s largest telemedicine provider and to expand its range of services to help even more people. Grant funding and technical assistance from the USAID Local Health System Sustainability Project (LHSS) has enabled him to fast-track these dreams, he says, adding that without the LHSS support it would have taken him 10 years to take the company to where it is now.
The grant to Online Medics is part of LHSS’s work with the Government of Jamaica to engage private health care providers in the country’s COVID-19 response. LHSS has provided similar grants and technical assistance to seven other private health care providers to scale up access to COVID-19 vaccination services, especially in underserved communities.
Investing in capacity strengthening
LHSS’s technical assistance uses a participatory approach that invites the grantees to define their own capacity strengthening needs and priorities. The assistance focuses on the internal capabilities that will enable them to successfully carry out the COVID-19 vaccination work, while also positioning them to support future Ministry of Health efforts as contractors. By preparing grantees to engage directly with the government, LHSS grants help promote transition from donor-led to locally designed and implemented public health initiatives.
“It was really the capacity development that I valued the most,” Dr. Tracey said. LHSS provided Online Medics and other grantees with guidance in administrative and managerial areas including financial reporting and accounting, operational standards and best practices, and inventory documentation.
“LHSS allowed me to think in the long term — where I wanted my company to go and what I need to do to get it there.”
With this renewed sense of direction and the grant funding from LHSS, Dr. Tracey was able to lease a facility in a rural community where access to COVID-19 vaccines was limited. He purchased an ultrasound machine to offer an additional service to the community. In three months, Online Medics recruited three doctors, six nurses and two medical assistants, enabling the company to serve more patients. Remaining true to his desire to help others, Dr. Tracey also organized health fairs to offer free medical services in addition to COVID-19 vaccines.
New patients, new partners
LHSS also provided communications training to the grantees, which gave them insights into how they could more strategically market and promote their businesses and services. At Online Medics, Dr. Tracey invested in paid marketing, which gave the company an additional boost.
“We started receiving patients from all over and companies began reaching out to partner with us,” he said. One such partnership was with the Heart Trust National Service Training Agency, a vocational training and academic institution. The partnership will see Online Medics training individuals to become medical assistants, a service that will benefit Jamaica’s under-resourced public health system.
“This was all made possible through the increased visibility we received by being a part of this project,” said Dr. Tracey.
The experience of Online Medics is a testament that a model that cultivates multisector collaboration, from design to implementation, works. By investing in the goals of small health care providers like Online Medics, the LHSS grants program has allowed Jamaica’s private health sector to gain additional capabilities to support the country’s COVID-19 response and future health needs.
