Today I went to the hospital for the first time to remedy an acute illness. It was quite nice to see how the hospital works here, I went to the emergency dept and got it all worked out, 75 AED copay and the prescriptions were included for free. Very nice. I like the standard line of questioning, "Are you married? Yes? Would you like to take a pregnancy test today?" Um, no thanks.
The hospital wasn't quite up to the standards of Kaiser Permanente, like for example the emergency room is just a bunch of beds separated by curtains (no actual "rooms" for patients), privacy is much lower, they make you carry your pee-test bottle through the lobby from the bathroom, and you have to explain your difficulties to the admitting nurse at the reception counter not 16 inches away from the large family waiting on the bench. On the flip side, customer service was much better- maybe this is how it works when you have an insurance card that you can take to any number of competing private hospitals. They apologized to me for having to wait a long time (I waited way less time than I ever have in the Kaiser urgent care clinic) and were very very concerned about pain management. They offered me an injection for pain, which I declined citing the minor-ness of my pain, but in retrospect I wonder what exactly this injection was, and whether it was something really boom-bang like morphine, in which case perhaps I made the wrong decision.
All this got me to thinking about my experiences in hospitals, and I can definitely make some completely scientific rankings of the hospital-quality of various countries based on single visits to individual emergency rooms I've had, by extrapolating that those experiences are 100% representative of health care in the given nation as a whole. Here are my conclusions, with 1 being best and 6 being worst:
Quality of care received:
1. America: We can say for sure that we beat the middle east and latin american nations
2. UAE
3. Cuba
4. Belize
5. Guatemala
6. Honduras: You're miscarrying? We're on break! Go somewhere else if you don't like it.
Bedside manner:
1. Cuba: Our nurses are required to calm 150 fussy babies into dreamless sleep before graduating
2. Guatamala
3. UAE
4. America: If you want to talk about your feelings, we'll write you a referral.
5. Honduras
6. Belize: Stop being such a f*cking wimp, it'll only hurt excruciatingly for the rest of the day
Wait time:
1. Belize: There's never a wait, mon, can't imagine why.... you f*cking wimp.
2. Cuba: Our motto - Fast if you're Foreign.
3. UAE
4. Guatemala
5. Honduras
6. America: Come in with a hang-nail, leave with gangrene. What are you going to do, get a new employee-sponsored health plan? Ha.
Use of modern technology:
1. America: The fish in our lobby tanks are genetically modified to never die and to never look depressed
2. UAE
3. Guatemala
4. Honduras: Now fully exploiting the wheel
TIE!
6. Belize: Let us grab our wrench, we can knock that right out
6. Cuba: We used to send a guy over to raid the Sputnik medical kits, but now we use FedEx
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2 comments:
I can't believe no one's commented on this yet. Great blog post. I can't believe you've required medical care in so many countries. I can tell you that health care in England is okay. The wait for us was long, and I mean looooong, but the care was okay. We got good drugs for free, and the staff was nice (although I couldn't understand a word they were saying).
I didn't require medical care in all those countries - in Belize, it was my poor traveling companion who got a piece of coral broken off in his toe. But yes, I do have a tendency to end up in foreign hospitals.
How did you know the staff in England was nice?? Maybe they were just smiling and adopting pleasant intonation while calling you a yankee hick. =)
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