THE QUALITY OF MERCY

Patients who want to be treated at Siriraj Hospital but have the means to pay for medical services will soon be able to see a physician at the brand new Siriraj Piyamaharajkarun Hospital. 

Functioning like a private hospital but under the umbrella of Siriraj Hospital’s Faculty of Medicine, the 14-storey Siriraj Piyamaharajkarun is located at the former Bangkok Noi train station on the banks of Chao Phaya river. It houses 177 outpatient rooms, 17 operating theatres, 284 inpatient rooms and 61 intensive care units. Specialists centres cover surgery, heart, radiation therapy and dialysis.

The Faculty currently takes care of more than 2.8 million patients per year and the number is increasing constantly. “The new hospital is an alternative for patients who can pay more for better service and yet want to get Siriraj quality treatment,” says Assoc Prof Pradit Panchavinnin, director of the SiPH.

Thais prefer to consult the nation’s best doctors when they are ill and that means heading to medical school hospitals like Siriraj, Chulalongkorn or Ramathibodi. It also means being at the hospital before dawn to get in the queue, sitting around for hours and if admission is required for further treatment or surgery, waiting that may go on for months as patient beds are always full. Many are forced to pay high fees at after-hours clinics or private hospitals where the doctors from these medical schools work part time and earn better fees than at the medical school hospital.

“Our fee won’t be as expensive as the leading private hospitals. SiPH will be around 20 per cent cheaper but the treatment standards will be the same as at Siriraj,” says Dr Pradit.

The hospital will hold its soft opening on March 19 but will not offer full services immediately. Dr Pradit estimates that 30 per cent of services will be offered initially including outpatients and a partial inpatient department, with the formal opening taking place on April 26, the day on which Siriraj Hospital was founded. 

“We expect to offer about 50 per cent of services in the first year but we will be fully operational within three years,” he says.

The success of Siriraj’s first private venture – a special department called “The Heart by Siriraj” – convinced the Faculty to extend the services into a full general hospital.

“When we first opened ‘The Heart’ back in 2006, we didn’t have a lot of patients but the number gradually increased and it’s now a very successful unit,” he says.

The Heart by Siriraj specialises in cardiac conditions and the fees for services are on par with private hospitals. The unit will become part of the new hospital.

As for the staffing, Pradit says some doctors will be transferred from Siriraj Hospital while others will be recruited. “The core team in every department will be transferred from Siriraj. We will recruit new staff too. They can come from any reputable medical school but all doctors must be graduates of Mahidol University,” he says.

Given the high costs involved, part of the modern equipment will be shared with Siriraj though SiPH will have its MRI and Linac machines. That’s a plus, as patients attending public hospitals often have to wait three months for an MRI scan.

“We consider the MRI a priority so we have our own. We will however share the equipment that doesn’t have a high patient load,” says Professor Kritvikrom Durongpisitkul, the SiPH deputy director.

Specialist doctors will divide their time between Siriraj and SiPH, which should help stop the brain drain to the private hospitals.

“But we have certain procedures and rules that help them to balance their work between Siriraj and the new hospital. As the hospital is just next to Siriraj, it’s easy for them to walk back and forth,” says Dr Pradit.

Like any private hospital, the SiPH won’t accept patients from the universal healthcare or social security system. Revenues will return to the faculty, which is struggling to treat its ever-growing caseload. 

“We don’t want to make huge profits so our priority is Thai patients, not foreign patients,” he adds.

“Though we are running as a private hospital, we still want to keep the Siriraj integrity and we will take care of patients as people in our family. Quality treatment goes beyond even VIP service,” he says.

 

 

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