Comment

Local hospitals healthier than in LA

By Kerry Xie (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-17 07:56

Just in case some of you foreigners (Americans) don't have universal healthcare coverage, and sweat when you contemplate paying for sudden illnesses, I feel duty-bound as a fellow human being to share the good news.

Beijing hospitals are fully equipped to cure your foreign hide. True, some resemble inner-city YMCAs more than health centers, but most put your average Western hospital to shame. Witness Beijing's Wuzhou Women's Hospital.

My experience with American healthcare taught me to put off a minor complaint until it became major. So the pollution particle lodged in my eye had a good four days to turn from an itch to a burning, blinding threat to my vision.

In LA, without scheduling my dilemma three months in advance, I would have been in for a thousand-year wait in an emergency waiting room.

Here, I merely strolled down the street to the Women's Hospital.

From outside, the place looks more like a hotel than a healthcare center, with columns, cornice and balustrades for effect. So does the inside, with its grand lobby and sweeping staircase stealing attention from the reception counters.

Fortunately, the service matches the five-star hospitality theme.

Once I was through the revolving door, a tall, smartly dressed young woman inquired as to my complaint with an air of professional concern, then guided me through sign-in.

Within minutes I was whisked down a softly-carpeted hallway with recessed lighting, to the exam area lobby, dominated by a case displaying ancient suits of Chinese armor.

After presenting my papers, I was shown to a hallway waiting area; only one other patient was there. The doctor returned from his smoke break (ironic, I know, but I also know Western docs who smoke) and showed me right in.

His bedside manner impressed; even the best doctors I remember from America always had a hurried demeanor.

He prescribed some eye drops, then made a gentle attempt to up-sell me a comprehensive medical checkup. After I declined, he didn't press; he had done his duty to the private hospital he worked for. The drops cost 3 yuan. The doctor visit: 21 yuan.

How could such top-flight service, at a private hospital no less, cost so little? Everything's relative. Apparently, China's rank and file balk at such a steep bill to see a doctor. The maximum charge for a consultation at public hospitals here is 7 yuan. Three times the normal cost for a few hours' saved, and some soft carpeting? Pure extravagance.

Still not convinced? Very well, I'll play my trump card. Years ago in LA, my husband had a severe heart murmur. Usually a heart murmur means the valve flaps flutter a bit, but his were like barn doors in a hurricane. His heart was enlarging like the Grinch's on Christmas day, and untreated he would soon be unable to climb a flight of stairs without a two-hour nap afterwards, and a bowl of cornflakes.

Although we were paying a combined $300 a month for health insurance at the time, we would also have to pay for half of the six-figure operation and hospital stay.

The valve would have to be replaced with a metal one, demanding daily blood-thinner medication, and monthly monitoring, until either a hemorrhage or a stroke ended treatment.

Understandably, he put the operation off.

The first winter in Beijing had been rough on an LA native with a heart condition, but I was still shocked when he collapsed in a Pizza Hut clutching his arm.

A taxi driver and I got him to Fuwai, the best heart hospital in China, where a surgeon did some tests, and informed us he could fix the valve.

"But, the American doctors said he would need a metal."

"Tut, tut," the doctor admonished (with a Mandarin equivalent), "I can fix it."

The doctor was as good as his word. My husband spent three weeks in a private room. Total bill: 32,000 yuan. Hongbao for the head surgeon and his team, 10,000 yuan. Having a husband who needs no expensive daily medication just to stay alive: priceless.

For everyone else, there is still SOS & United, but I'll only be using them when I have too much money.