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Which is the Best Hospital in Thailand?


Savittre

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Sounds like the US. Maybe you just caught them on a bad day. I'm not defending the place but, through their publicity, many of us tourists think of it as the first option and are quite pleased with both the waiting time and the cost, compared to home where, as a walk-in, unless you complain of a serious heart condition, you won't be attended to anytime soon. Picture patients sitting around the lobby for hours with arrows through their heads. Oh, wait, maybe that was on Halloween...never mind.

 

Anyway, I like this thread. Gives non-residents a clue. :up:

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My name is Scott, I work at Bumrungrad. I have been following this thread since the beginning, as there has been interesting feedback for us.

 

First I would like to respond to the original poster who asked "which is the best hospital in Thailand?"

 

In this country there are many excellent hospitals, the reason we have so many medical travelers here. It would be very difficult to choose one as "the best" - they all have their strengths. Hospitals are a vetting ground for the doctors, and a base for them to treat patients. Hence at lower end hospitals you won't get the consistency of good doctors as at the higher end. But you will find good doctors at all hospitals. Naturally, in general the top 4 international hospitals will have the highest overall quality and service.

 

I think only one or two posts touched on the real subject, which should always be "which doctor do you recommend for xyz problem". It is the quality of the doctor which is important, and why the find a doctor page is one of the top viewed pages on our website.

 

The real reason I am replying is because of Alfmaz's comments on wait times - he mentioned that he waited 6 hours and did not see a doctor.

 

Alfmaz, if you can please PM me with the details of this - approximate dates, which floor and which station (if you can remember), I will feed this back to our quality control team.

 

And if anyone else experiences something like this, please feel free to PM me on this forum - it should get to my email. We have channels set up specifically to report any issues such as this.

 

Best regards,

 

Scott @ Bumrungrad

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I think only one or two posts touched on the real subject, which should always be "which doctor do you recommend for xyz problem". It is the quality of the doctor which is important, and why the find a doctor page is one of the top viewed pages on our website.

 

Hi, Scott, and welcome to the forum. I am pleased that you are using the forum as a means of gathering feedback.

 

I certainly agree with you in your overall view of the question as expressed by the OP. I have often stated the situation as "The problem with Thai medicine is that Thai private hospitals have gleaming new machinery, magnificent decor and beautiful nurses, but in the end it is the quality of the doctor that counts, and none of the other stuff matters very much."

 

As a practicioner and consultant back in the USA I often had the chance to ponder such questions as: "if socialized medicine has proven to be such a colossal failure in so many places, why are other countries rushing to adopt it?" (Answer: obviously the legislators don't think it is a failure. This comes about because the poor overworked legislators must rely on lobbyists for much of their information since the legislators are constantly forced to make laws about subjects they know nothing about.)

 

Naturally, coming from the USA one of the questions brought up the most often is whether the malpractice insurance conundrum we have is of any benefit at all. Virtually every medical treatment in the USA is more costly than necessary because the colossal cost of medical malpractice insurance must be factored in and a fair amount of treatment which is totally unnecessary is ordered just to protect the practicioners' backsides -- the so-called "defensive medicine."

 

At first this seems like a no-brainer: just let the doctors practice the way they know best and somehow remove the threat of a lawsuit from their backs.

 

But then we look to places like Thailand and see what happens when the doctors are not held personally accountable for their decisions and treatments.

 

Hey, when the head of the Department of Neurology at Bumrungrad had to choose a medication for my friend, I know that he was aware that the drug could cause kidney damage in a low proportion of patients. That is why the manufacturer clearly recommended a kidney test before prescribing. It is written all over the place, and this was a good doctor, trained both here and abroad. He had even passed his specialty boards. So he knew. No question.

 

So then we have to ask why he gave the drug without any test or even a question or warning to the patient, and thereby let her end up being ignored on a gurney in the emergency room of his hospital when she passed out from kidney damage a short time later.

 

Who knows? Maybe he was late for a hot date and wanted to save some time. One thing for sure, though, is that he felt it would never come back to haunt him. He was safe.

 

Does this reflect on the hospital? Of course! But the basic problem with Thai medicine remains Thai doctors and not their equipment or the hospital they work in. Mind you I am not saying that the education of these folks is sometimes not up to international standards (which is sometimes true but a different subject for a different day). And I am also not saying all Thai doctors engage in immoral treatment (Can ther be any other term for knowingly taking risks with the patients' health for one's own personal benefit?) What I AM saying is that too many otherwise excellant practicioners are tempted by the system to take the easy, quick, or profitable path simply because they feel confident that no one will know.

 

This is endemic here and the fancy degrees on the wall give no guarantee that the patients' needs won't come last.

 

I certainly hope that the hospitals here can find a better way to address this problem than the way that Western doctors have, but this problem will keep treatment in Thai hospitals from being truly of international standard until it is fixed. Obviously most patients have no idea that their treatments have been less than optimal, but as the saying goes, you can fool all of the people some of the time ...

 

At some point the bubble that your partially state-sponsored paid international advertising has created is going to burst and the fantastic wealth that this haas created for the few will end. I am hopeful that at that point Thai medicine will finally really reach international standards. The potential is there, but the present reality falls short. Please feel free to PM me if you would like.

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Would anyone care to say which hospital they think is the best in Thailand? My bet would be Bumrungrad on Soi 3, but there is the Bangkok-Pattaya hospital too. And, I've heard good things about Bangkok Christian Hospital, which is cheaper than Bumrungrad. Of course I don't want to pay an unreasonable price, but the main thing is my health.

 

I have had a chronic health problem for a long time now, and I want to get something done about it if the possibility exists. Thanks!

 

 

Depends on how much you want to spend.

 

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Samitiwej number 1? Not a chance for me!

 

About 5 years ago, I was in The Londoner with my best mate from NZ, his Mrs and my Mrs. My mate just keels over and starts howling of pain, holding his stomach. I knew that Samitiwej was the closest decent hospital and the easiest to get to so we rushed him there.

 

From what he was telling me, it sounded like kidney stones and I said this to the doctor at Samitiwej who said that no, the symptoms were absolutely not consistent eith kidney stones. The doctor was hopeless and after pain medication had been administrated, I told the doctor that he was hopeless and that now that my pal was no longer in pain, we were taking him to BNH. "You can't", the doctor said.

 

"Just watch me!" I said.

 

Across town to BNH where he was straight into some specialist, tests carried out and what do you know....it was kidney stones!

 

Samitiwej is one hospital I will never step foot in again. That was the one and only time for me.

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