Blog Number 3

Blog Number 3

Hola!

                It’s day number three and we’re up again at 5am, and the sun is already shining.  Today we are going to be visiting three hospitals: Clinica Biblia,  CIMA, and Blanco Cervantes.  We will be observing the differences between public and private hospitals and also taking a closer look at medical tourism. 

                The first hospital we visited  was called Clinica Biblia.  The hospital was about 80 years old and literally looked like it had been built two years ago!  It is, of course, a private hospital and very nice looking.  This hospital is very popular for medical tourism because there are nice rooms and many beds for people to recover in after surgery.  The hospital is expensive for Costa Ricans, but compared to hospitals in the US, it is dirt cheap!  The rooms were extremely nice and very spacious.  I was interested to see the neonatal unit.  The rooms had a bed for the mother and child and then had a separate room for sitting, feeding, resting, and watching tv!  This room was only 500$ a night! That type of room in the US would have been 2 or 3 times that amount.

                The second hospital we visited was the public hospital.  BOY was it the complete opposite of Clinica Biblia.  I felt very unsafe when we drove up to the entrance.  We were told to be very careful with all of our belongings because someone might try to steal them from us!  This hospital was very big and very crowded.  The rooms were a lot smaller and most of them had two beds!  This clinic was for the public of course.  Costa Rican citizens pay 9% of their income for all of their medical expenses.  I thought it was very interesting that ALL medical expenses are covered by this money.  So basically if you had cancer and you went to this hospital, they would have to treat you for it no matter how expensive it was.  In the US we have to pay for everything separately and most surgeries or treatments are VERY expensive!

                The third hospital we visited is called CIMA.  This hospital is VERY big on medical tourism.  They have many different units and their surgeons actually try not to work in groups, which is quite different than in the US.  This hospital was in a more remote location compared to the city and was surrounded by developing hotels.  This is a great business opportunity for them because guests coming for medical tourism also have places to stay before and after surgery to recover.  We ended this lovely visit with A LOT of rain!!