Myrah Keating Smith Community Health Center on St. John has secured the necessary donations to pay for a telemedicine program which would link patients on the island with physician specialists on the mainland for consultation.

Harold Wallace, administrator at Myrah Keating, told members of the Schneider Regional Medical Center board at a meeting Wednesday night that a private donor had contributed an amount which, combined with donations from the St. John Rotary Club, would enable the project to move forward.

The private donor is Donald Sussman, he said.

Wallace said that the telemedicine service and leasing the equipment would cost about $100,000 for three years.

Telemedicine links patients to specialists elsewhere, in real time, through a "virtual office," Wallace said after the meeting. Officials plan to coordinate the program with the Cleveland Clinic, which already has a relationship with Schneider Regional Medical Center. Wallace said officials are working on a contract now.

"The goal is to be able to use specialist providers we don't have here on island," Wallace said, adding that other goals include increasing efficiency and increasing convenience for patients, by saving them some trips off-island for care.

The way it would work is that doctors at Myrah Keating would refer a patient to a stateside specialist and an appointment would be made. The stateside doctor and the patient on St. John would meet via videoconference, where they could see each other and speak back and forth.

If a medical exam is necessary, a health-care provider in the room with the patient would use specialized medical equipment, with cameras on it, so the doctor would be able to visualize what he would see if he were in the room looking through the equipment, Wallace said.

"I feel very, very excited about this," he said after the board meeting. "This is something we have been working on for the past year."

In other business, the board discussed the financial challenges Schneider Regional is facing.

Board chair Cornel Williams said he is considering setting up a task force with a mission of containing and cutting costs at the hospital.

Williams said he believes the recession on the U.S. mainland could have a "significant impact" in the Virgin Islands by mid to late spring. He said that he would like to "get ahead of it" by making critical cost-containing decisions before the situation gets worse.

In other financial discussion, Williams said that unaudited financials indicate that in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Schneider Regional experienced an overall deficit of about $17 million. Interim Chief Financial Officer Eugene Welsh said he expects auditors to close out the year's books soon and would have final figures at that time.

In his report, Welsh said the hospital collects only 46 cents out of every dollar billed to patients.

The board also heard a report on the progress of a search for a new chief executive officer. The board's executive search committee has put together a request for qualifications and a request for proposals and has identified several executive search firms it is interested in.

In other action, the board:

- Approved the executive committee moving forward to finalize a request for proposals for a "current state" analysis of Schneider Regional and to advertise the RFP in local and national media.

- Approved a two-year contract, at $275,000 a year, with CPS Management. CPS provides comprehensive pharmacy management services at Schneider Hospital, including a full-time director for the pharmacy.