The South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) is a statutory body of the Ministry of Health. SERHA is one of four Regional Health Authorities formed as a part of the Health Sector reform, by passage of the National Health Services Act in 1997.
The main administrative office of SERHA is located at 25 Dominica Drive in New Kingston.
SERHA is responsible for the delivery of health care services to the residents of St. Catherine, St. Thomas, Kingston and St. Andrew. This represents 47% of the population of Jamaica. SERHA is managed by a team of directors ably led by the Regional Director who reports to a Board, which is appointed by the Minister of Health. The region is funded by allocations from the Ministry of Health and fees collected at its institutions.
To meet the objectives of delivering health care, SERHA has teamed with a number of partners. These include individuals, non-governmental organizations and private sector agencies.
SERHA employs approximately 6000 individuals from a variety of medical and non-medical groups. These include staff directly involved with health care delivery, for example nurses, doctors, technologists, pharmacists, health record administrators, attendants and public health inspectors. There are other staff members who work to ensure that the health care delivery system functions at an optimal level and give support to those charged with the direct delivery of health care. These include among others the Management Information staff, maintenance teams, Human Resource, administrative and accounting staff.
Health Care is delivered through a network of 10 hospitals and 89 Health Centres. Five of the ten hospitals within the region are also specialist or National Referral Hospitals. Some of these institutions also accept patients referred from other Caribbean islands.