About 2 weeks ago, I stepped out of my room, and I suddenly felt a sharp pang of pain bolting from my right foot. I yelped and sat down at the staircase and looked at the bottom of my foot. I was bleeding from a cut in my heel. I couldn't find the sharp object which perpetrated it. The pain was very livid and I felt my nerve being pressed inside my heel and I knew there must have been a piece of glass stuck in there. (Several weeks ago, a square of glass from my bedroom door broke and shattered to the ground, and there must have been remnants).
On Monday I finally decided to go visit the doctor as the sting had not subsided and every time I stepped or applied pressure to my heel (which is every time I walk), it sent shooting pain. We opted for FV Hospital (Franco-Vietnamese Hospital), a western hospital that had a clinic in District 1, close to our house. The main hospital is in District 7, about 11 km away.
FV Hospital is Vietnam's first and only internationally accredited healthcare facility, having been recognized by the French organization Haute Autorité de Santé in 2007. The hospital was created in 2003 by French doctors, and today it is staffed with highly qualified French doctors as well as Vietnamese doctors trained overseas, predominantly in France. The hospital follows many French medical processes and standards, as is evident in the ability of many Vietnamese doctors to speak French, as well as French terminology and charts used in the hospital's documents. The hospital's slogan is
World Class Healthcare in Vietnam, and world class it was...
All of the rooms in FV Hospital are designed with an utmost sense of style, space and comfort. The lobby of the main hospital contains a beautiful cafe with a modern lounge area, complete with stylish flatscreen computers to use (at a charge), and a large flatscreen tv which was featuring the Olympic games. Even the in-hospital pharmacy has an appealing lime-green spacious seating area. There is free wifi throughout the whole hospital for visitors to use. There is also a cafeteria with a large array of delicious foods and desserts, and a gift shop (although I did not visit it to know what kind of souvenir gifts the hospital offered, or what kind of gifts any hospitals would offer on that matter... Can we say... a bit... presumptuous?). The smaller clinic in District 1 is equally modern, chic, and clean.
Upon my initial consultation with the doctor at the smaller clinic, we had an X-ray done within the same facility. The whole process from setting up the X-ray appointment to getting the results to the doctor only took within a span of half an hour. The X-ray confirmed there was a foreign body at the very bottom of my heel, which would have gone undetected if the X-ray film was not held against a purely bright white background and if the viewer was not a rigorous observer. The doctor referred me for a meeting with the orthopedic surgeon for the following morning for further consultation and a possible surgery.
The following morning, I met with the orthopedic surgeon, a warm and caring Vietnamese middle-aged man seemingly trained in France. A surgery was warranted after he examined my foot and after I pointed out the shard of glass myself on the X-ray, as he did not detect it himself during his scanning (This was a cause for worry for me! Was he actually the same doctor that was going to operate on me?!!).
Did you eat this morning? He asked me. I replied no.
How about coffee? No, again.
So you've had nothing to drink or eat? I continued assuring no.
So we could have the operation this afternoon then, if you want.
And that's how we fit the impromptu operation into my Tuesday afternoon. I had met the fasting requirements. The doctor explained to me that I would need to stay back at the hospital for at least the evening as he would be using general anesthesia on me. He suggested that local anesthesia would not fully mitigate the pain/discomfort. He suggested that I even stay overnight at the hospital to fully recuperate my health. I thought that was a bit far-fetched for the minor problem that I had, but you can bet as the events unfolded that I did not mind being hospitalized at FV Hospital one bit.
As with all hospitals in Vietnam, you need to pay the bills before any kind of medical procedures, including consultation with the doctors. So of course I made sure I had clearance from my health insurance provider (through my school) before agreeing to be treated at the most prestigious hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. As the saying goes,
you get what you pay for, and its inalienable inverse was definitely true,
you pay for what you get. And world class sure comes with a hefty price.
The first consultation that I had, on Monday, for which I hadn't claimed I had insurance yet, cost me 450,00VND (about $22). In comparison, when I went to a local Vietnamese hospital last year, at the An Sinh General Hospital, the fee for consultation was 100,000 VND ($5). (And keep in mind that Vietnamese hospitals usually charge on a two-tiered system: one price base for locals, and a higher price base for foreigners. So that means that locals would be paying even less than the 100,000 VND for their consultation). As for the X-ray imaging, at FV Hospital, I had to pay 390,000 VND (about $19.50); at the An Sinh Hospital, I had paid a mere 120,000 VND (about $6).
Add to this pricing matrix another tier for Insurance Companies. At FV Hospital, on Tuesday, I claimed and provided my Insurance Policy information, and prices got readjusted accordingly. The hospital's bill to the insurance company for my second consultation was a whopping 1,100,000 VND ($55). As for the cost of the surgical procedure and hospitalization, if I didn't have insurance, they would have charged me a "discounted" individuals' price of 22,700,000 VND ($1100), but with approved coverage by my Insurance Company, they charged the "correct" price of 42,703,599 VND ($2100) at the end of my stay.
In stark contrast, when I told my Vietnamese housemate of the impending charge should I not be covered by my Insurance Company, she gasped in horror and told me not to do it with this hospital, as it would just cost about 500,000 VND ($25) to get the appropriate procedure done at a regular Vietnamese hospital.
The procedure at the local Vietnamese hospital would not include general anesthesia, but it would have the bare necessities, including the local anesthesia, and it would do all that it's required to do to get that shard of glass out of my heel. No extra fluff. No memorable experience. But of course, for all top-notch companies, as with FV Hospital, the high price you are paying for is not just for the state-of-the-art facilities, but also for the infrastructure, the decor, and very importantly the great service and care. And oh boy did they have incredible service at the hospital.
The medical professionals and doctors at the main hospital were all very attentive and friendly. They worked in harmony with one another, and there is always someone to take you from step A to step B, including an officer who escorted me from the surgical center, down to the admissions area, to the pre-operation area. I was thoroughly informed of the processes throughout my treatment. After providing my insurance information upon consulting with the orthopedic surgeon at the first clinic, the procedures, as they had advised me prior, included an agent from the insurance department of the hospital calling me as soon as they received clearance from my insurance company, and advising me on the scope of my coverage, and which extra services would fall out of the coverage range.
The nurses were phenomenal, paying attention to my every need, and extremely caring. The surgical staff were friendly and reassuring, as my feelings of anxiousness were mixed with bemusement as I was being pushed on a rolling bed towards the operation room with a group of masked surgical assistants hovering above my face all asking me questions about my origins and musing on my funny Vietnamese accent. I was put under by general anesthesia for about 2 hours while the operation lasted about 20-30 minutes. Upon waking up, I was gently rolled to my single hospital room, itself very nice and easily mistakable for a hotel room, and throughout the evening and the next morning, the nurses took great care of me. A separate officer came in to advise on the food menu and to take my choice, as well as another officer to deliver and advise on my medications each time I was due to take them. In the morning, a quality assurance officer in a pink nurse outfit came to ask me if I had any complaints or concerns and expressed to me the hospital's endeavour of delivering high customer care, and at the end, a group of new nurses came in and, with my consent, watched as one of the nurses worked on bandaging my foot for departure, all under the watch and guidance of the head supervisor of the nursing department who came from China and whose job was to provide continuous training to nurses at the hospital and to bring all nursing services to high standards. Dispatching was swift and easy, where I recuperated some of my items and signed off.
From consultation, to pre-op preparation, to treatment, to dismissal, I felt very welcome and well tended to at FV Hospital. You can really tell that the hospital prides itself on customer service and seeks to accentuate the customer experience. FV Hospital holds true to its core value of putting their patient at the heart of the hospital, as is proscribed on their website. Sure, FV Hospital places fees on the higher end of the spectrum ( in Vietnam, but still low compared to Western hospitals), but it also does so to your sense of wellbeing.
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| Small FV clinic in District 1 |
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| My X-ray result... Do you see the shard of glass? |
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| FV Hospital |
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| It costs 300,000 VND ($15) for a guest to stay overnight with you in your room, which includes a fold-up bed and breakfast in the morning |
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| Foreign nurse supervisor training new nurses |
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| The culprit (or my ticket to FV Hospital) |
