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Long term health (feeling)

Peter99 (1246 posts) • +1

Im not suggesting its a total scam, its probably not. I suspect its a marketing trick - by the main hospital - targeting chinese, but i have no idea. As theres no info. Pretty much zero info.

Just in comparsion this is what medical SERVICES look like giving info in Thailand. Info in several languages too.

www.bumrungrad.com

Anyway, im out now, enough said.

Lanajot (61 posts) • +1

A young, very competent American doctor treated my husband at Grace Medical when he was horribly sick. He did a great job of listening, checking symptoms and also explaining the diagnosis and treatment. I cried thankful tears of relief that my husband was in good hands. It’s the only place here that I trust with my family’s health and their fees are really reasonable. They always seem busy and probably don’t need to do extravagant marketing. I guess having an updated Facebook page or popping up on a Google search is not priority in a country where those things are inaccessible for most...

Peter99 (1246 posts) • 0

@ Lanajot

Well thats great. And did find a single short webpage in Chinese too now.

That being said, i could dig up plenty news links from same western publications some of our guys here have affection with, to say some stories on this issue (i.e. on the hospital scandals in general). Even from cloudtrapezers main news source - with the exception of ishmaels. Oh, last year was quite a rumble on this issue.

But I’ll let that pass. Would start to look like id be doing too much propaganda here, while, in fact, just being genuine.

But just sayin’, it can also be perfectly reasonable some prefer overseas services, if they have specific concerns, when even many chinese do. Yea, so many that HK was panicking last year on this. But, depending on what your issue is, of course.

Did I really have to point that out.

(Apologises being loud here, but since did choose Thailand, and herenows post was on the issue, had a card on the table here so to say. Could have agreed with him on routine checks, but since couldnt find even a webpage - except the broken facebook page - of this great company offering serverices, it tangled up a bit. And honestly, well they dont give too professional image [of international standard] when its that untransparent and messy in initial presentation. Makes them look like a bunch of amateurs.)

Now, out.

Ishmael (462 posts) • -2

My impression is that there are very good and also quite poor medical resources and doctors in Kunming - problem is to find the better ones, as the problem seems to be what you might call 'quality control'. Have had mixed results, but the KM Med. University No.2 hospital is pretty good, though it may have to do with the specific medical department you're involved with - dealt with a skin problem, potentially a very serious one, well, complete cure after a little initial diagnostic confusion. Friend of mine about to have an operation to solve serious knee problems there, they're supposed to be good for osteo... anyway, bone stuff.

I know a guy who had triple bypass heart surgery in a private Chinese hospital in Kunming, with 2-3 surgeons who came down from Beijing to do it. Total cost was something like US$25,000. He was VERY positive about it all, and I had a beer with him a few weeks after he got out of the hospital, when he seemed to be in fine shape. This was a few years ago and he still seems to be in good shape. He's in his early 60s, I think.
KM No. 1 hospital - another friend, an American cardiologist, had stomach-hernia operation there, seemed all good, he was in & out in 3 days, but he said the neurological folks there were not so good. Don't bother with KM No.1-affiliated (what does that really mean here? Although KM No.1 hospital itself has a good local reputation) skin disease hospital on renminxilu, they prescribed Chinese med & it din't help much.

Certainly don't bother with KM dadian hospital, they seemed like some creation of a pharmaceutical company to push their own meds, & the doctor(?) I saw, well, didn't strike me as a doctor, & the X-ray guy - who, to be fair, produced what seemed to be a competent chest x-ray - struck me as merely an x-ray-machine mechanic - whole place appeared very dodgy. This was about bronchitis, which I later dealt with successfully pretty much on my own.

But I guess I'm off topic - doesn't have much to do with long-term feeling of health problems.

redjon777 (560 posts) • +1

Reading the different posts about Kunming hospitals kind of strengthens the point about feeling confident having something done here. It’s all ‘well this place was good, here had this bad thing, would never go there blah blah blah’. When going to a hospital for illness the last thing you need to be doing beforehand is checking the quality ratings through guesswork.
@ishmael But even though I’m saying that, if you’re going somewhere to have very top end operations, I’m sure they’d never just get the local plumber in for something like a triple heart bypass.

Because of the system here in China you’ll never really feel 100% secure in what’s being done. Any major stuff I’d definitely be on a flight home where the last thought on my mind is if the doctors, technicians, equipment etc are up to par. I’m just thinking of the illness that I was there for.

Minor things I’d still do here though, like I had a tooth out recently. It won’t kill me.

Ishmael (462 posts) • -2

@redjon: 'Home' meaning...? The US is ridiculously expensive, due to fear of 'socialized medicine' and the self-serving propaganda of tha American Medical Association. Does your home have objectively good health care? I'd trust Boomirath (sp?) in Chiangmai, and several others there or in Bkk (as does the US Veteran's Administration - an ex-Marine friend is treated well there for half a million serious problems he's got), whether you're Thai or not, for anything I didn't want to do here, and I haven't worried after either of my 2 annual checkups at McCormick in Chiangmai - lots of fancy machinery, if it makes one feel better, including a bone-density scan (MRI) - which cost just under US$300 each, and that was for the most expensive & complete checkup they offered.

The sonogram-operater I had as part of the standard visa-required check here some 10 years ago, which cost less than US$50, turned up a kidney thing, measured, but she responsibly said I should have a ct scan because sonogram isn't that accurate. I made the mistake of having the ct-scan in the US, as I was going there for a couple weeks anyway, for US2000 (here it's a few hundred kuai), produced almost exactly the same measurements, so it was a huge waste. No complications predicted either here or there, and I've had none. In other words, the woman knew her job.

I'd risk more than a tooth here - bone-setting, for example: a friend has come through well after a triple-fracture leg break. I'd guess many veterinarians could do simple bone-setting, anyway. A lot of medical procedures are not rocket science. Anyway, there's no 100% secure about anything anywhere, feeling secure & being secure are different - psychologically best not to demand it be available.

P.S.: Don't expect anything special at Richland Hospital, they just seem to speak English and charge more than the big public hospitals. An Australian friend was told, at Richland, that he had appendicitis; he immediately flew to Australia and there was told he didn't have appendicitis - and he didn't. They're the folks who told me to go to KM No. 2 Hospital for my skin disease, so I'll give at least one doctor there credit for honesty - it was the right choice. See gokunming listings for comments on Richland.

In short, redjon, find a good doctor here if you think you need one before you go off and do something absurd. I may need cataract removal in a year, will do it either here or at McCormick - it's not rocket science either - and I feel good about my health in the meantime, which was what you originally mentioned. Note that my health problems that I've mentioned are all about age, not food or air or whatever - well, the skin thing, I don't know where that came from, but it was an auto-immune problem, not local bugs.

Hong Kong has good doctors too, and they speak English, if that's an issue - as do doctors at hospitals in Thailand, though maybe the average level is not quite as good - but Hong Kong medical care is not cheap for foreign non-residents.

You can be in Hong Kong in 7 hours by good train for under 700 kuai.

herenow (357 posts) • +2

More relativism creeping in here. The general standard of local medical care is just not comparable to that in Western countries (plus Hong Kong / Bangkok / South Korea / Singapore / Japan) for numerous reasons that have been well-documented elsewhere: training, hygiene, TCM, salary levels, skewed incentives, unnecessary & pervasive use of IV drips, etc.

The fact that someone had good results with such-and-such procedure at a local hospital is an anecdote, nothing more. Having cataract surgery done here seems foolhardy.

And this is no knock on China. My impression is that the general national standard of care is about on par with countries at comparable levels of GDP per capita, which is nothing to be ashamed of.

P.S. Ishmael/Alien: If you haven't done so already, check out the research about sunlight and auto-immune skin conditions.

Ishmael (462 posts) • 0

@Herenow: Don't know the research in any detail, but my understanding has been that the auto-immune (lupus, anyway) tends to require avoidance of sunlight rather than the other way around. Anyway, to worry about Kunming health environment because of sunlight at altitude sounds a bit much - but thanks for the heads-up. I do sunlight well now, here & elsewhere, and have ever since the problem went away, thanks to the head of skinstuff at KM No. 2.
'General standard of health care' - I certainly agree, but one doesn't need the best for everything, and anyway I'm not suggesting accepting the general standard for serious health problems - like I said, the problem is often one of 'quality control', one needs to find the better ones for serious problems.
Anyway, I don't know redjon's situation in particular (redjon, I'm not jumping you), but I do hear worries from expats that seem to be a bit too heavy for the local reality, and this is not uncommon for people living outside the cultures in which they have been brought up - not just a personal impression, but one backed up by plenty of anthropologists and others who have studied such things. Hell, worry itself is a health problem.

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