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Key Takeaways
- Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, Jamaica, has undergone major rehabilitation since 2016 but has faced constant delays and budget overruns.
- Prime Minister Andrew Holness recently opened the new Accident and Emergency department after ten years of work, but other sections of the hospital remain unfinished.
- Holness attributed the project’s issues to a lack of new hospital construction over the past 40 years, resulting in a shortage of technical expertise.
- Jamaica’s capital spending on healthcare increased significantly, from $1.54 billion in 2016-2017 to a projected $10.18 billion in 2025-2026, yet systemic challenges persist.
- The Prime Minister questioned whether rehabilitating the old Cornwall Hospital was the best option, suggesting building a new facility could have been more efficient.
Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, Jamaica, has been undergoing a major rehabilitation and construction project for over a decade as of November 2026. The hospital’s original building was completed in 1972 and opened its doors in 1974.
The large-scale redevelopment began in 2016, prompted by the closure of parts of the facility due to noxious fumes. At that time, the Government set a 2018 completion target. However, the project has consistently missed deadlines and incurred several budget overruns.
On Friday, November 13, 2026, Prime Minister Andrew Holness spoke at the opening of the Accident and Emergency (A&E) department after more than ten years of work. Despite this progress, the overall rehabilitation, which includes other sections of the hospital, remains ongoing.
In his remarks, PM Holness suggested that the numerous delays and budget overruns in the Cornwall Regional Hospital project stem from Jamaica’s lack of new public hospital construction in over four decades. This long gap has resulted in a deficiency of technical expertise needed to deliver major healthcare projects efficiently.
“The bigger problem, my friends, is that we have not built a hospital in over 40 years,” he said during Friday’s reopening of the Accident and Emergency Department at the Montego Bay, St James-based hospital.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness (Jamaica Gleaner).
“That means the skills and the talent and the know-how are not resident in the Government of Jamaica right now.”
The prime minister said the difficulties experienced at CRH had forced him to confront the limitations within the public sector, including its inability to translate increased capital allocations into completed infrastructure projects.
“We simply do not have an embedded culture of quickly converting the capital budget into concrete,” Holness said.
The Prime Minister stated that although the Government had significantly increased capital spending on healthcare, the country’s administrative and technical systems had not kept up with this growth.
He presented receipts showing that the health sector’s capital budget rose from approximately $1.54 billion in 2016-2017 to $11.5 billion in 2024-2025. In addition, the Government expects the health sector’s budget to reach $10.18 billion in 2025-2026.
According to Holness, allocating funds was just one aspect of the challenge.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘We have allocated this, this is the budget.’ We have the money to spend, but still, the Ministry of Health, at the end of every year, sends back a large part of its capital budget,” he said.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness (Jamaica Gleaner).
PM Holness acknowledged that Cornwall Regional Hospital is one of several hospitals built before 1962.
Holness highlighted the age of Jamaica’s public hospitals as proof of decades of inadequate investment. He mentioned that several of the country’s 24 public hospitals were established before Independence in 1962. Notable examples include Kingston Public Hospital, Victoria Jubilee Hospital, Bellevue Hospital, and Spanish Town Hospital.
The prime minister stated that the consequences extended beyond healthcare, affecting schools, roads, and water systems. Many of these were deteriorating despite ongoing public use. He also questioned whether rehabilitating CRH was the most economical option, suggesting that demolishing the aging building and constructing a new facility might have been a faster solution.
Prime Minister Holness has raised several crucial issues that the general public has repeatedly brought up. This raises the question of why it took him so long to recognize that the Jamaican health sector is deteriorating.