Thai Hospitals Put on the Ritz in 5-Star Style

When an American tourist fell ill on a cruise ship last month and was rushed to Bangkok’s Bumrungrad Hospital, his family in Chicago fired off a batch of panicked e-mails, seeking reassurance that health care in Thailand wasn’t some Third World nightmare.

Reassurance soon came. The patient’s private, $60-a-day room was wired for the Internet, and after nurses delivered a computer, he messaged that care was great. He was on the concierge floor, he had cable TV--and, besides, Starbucks and McDonald’s, located in the lobby, had just brought room-service coffee and a Big Mac. He’d try the hospital’s Japanese restaurant for dinner, he said.

Although no one checks into Bumrungrad for a Big Mac, its nonmedical perks are a reminder that the Thai capital has taken dead aim on Singapore as the medical center of choice for foreigners in Southeast Asia.

In the battle for the lucrative niche, Bangkok’s hospitals have turned to aggressive marketing and amenities befitting five-star hotels to complement the top-quality health care that Thailand has offered for years.

Bangkok has one great advantage over Singapore: price. As Curtis Schroeder, Bumrungrad’s chief executive and the former administrator of USC-University Hospital in Los Angeles, puts it: “Thailand is the best health-care value in the world today, and I don’t think anyone would challenge me on that.”

Medical authorities say prices at Bangkok’s top hospitals are as little as one-fifth those in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, a third of Singapore’s and a tenth as much as in the United States. Example: A complete cardiac checkup, including consultations and a full range of tests, is about $100.

In many ways, the pitch for foreign patients is a direct result of the region’s economic crisis, because the private health-care industry mushroomed during the boom years and ended up at overcapacity. By the summer of 1997, Bangkok had 125 private hospitals with 14,000 beds.

Then the Thai currency, the baht, was devalued, sending the region’s economy into a tailspin. Some new hospitals that hadn’t yet built patient loads or attracted top doctors failed. Those that survived had to scramble to fill beds.

The foreign community was a likely target: Japan alone has 60,000 citizens in Thailand; 15,000 Americans live in Singapore. Tens of thousands more expatriates live in countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, where substandard medical services require a trip out of the country to see specialists.

“Traditionally, foreigners chose Singapore because its doctors were seen as more competent and spoke better English, but that perception is no longer true: Thai doctors and medical facilities today meet the highest international standards,” said Dr. Sachapan Israsena, medical director of the modern, 101-year-old Bangkok Nursing Home and Hospital, which rests on leafy, manicured grounds amid the city’s teeming sprawl.

The private hospital has one nurse for every five patients, a staff of English-speaking physicians trained mostly in the United States, Britain and Australia, and rooms with balconies overlooking landscaped gardens. Half its patients are foreigners.

Bumrungrad, which last year moved into a $110-million, 12-story facility, has taken the lead in the pitch for foreigners. Its high-ceilinged lobby is graced by teak pillars, upholstered sofas and a bubbling water fountain. Multilingual hostesses show patients to their carpeted rooms. In addition to McDonald’s and Starbucks, the hospital has full-service Thai and Japanese restaurants, a helipad and serviced apartments for patients’ families. A deluxe hospital suite, complete with dining area and bar, goes for $150 a night.

Believing that health care can be marketed as a service industry, like tourism or airlines, Bumrungrad’s Schroeder has set up representative offices in Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Bangladesh to help patients with visas and other arrangements.

He is talking with Thai Airways International about running health-care package trips to Thailand, and the interactive Web site he set up at https://www.bumrungrad.com gets up to 800 hits a day. Two staff members are assigned full time to answering e-mails.

So far, the strategy seems to be paying off. Although Bumrungrad also is popular with well-heeled Thais--only 3% of Thais have private health insurance--the number of foreign patients is expected to reach 160,000 this year, a 22% increase over 1998.

The hospital clinic, the largest in Southeast Asia, also sees half a million patients a year and prides itself on clockwork efficiency: On average, an outpatient spends only 42 minutes in Bumrungrad.

The Thai government agrees that medical care is a hard-currency market worth tapping into. Its Department of Export Promotions showcased eight Thai hospitals on a four-city Asian tour in March, and its Tourism Authority recently released a health-care directory for the travel industry.