Chinese hospitals

I had my first experience of Chinese hospitals last night. I was meeting a friend, Simon, for dinner last night. We've had the edge of a typhoon here in Shanghai so it was raining hard and pretty gusty. He slipped on the street in a rush to get out of the rain and cut his hand. So it was off to Huashan hospital (see picture), one of the better Chinese hospitals in Shanghai - its a university hospital.

It didn't look like the picture when we got there. They had all the gates closed to the hospital so I'm not sure how the ambulances are supposed to get in. I've been told you're better off in a taxi anyway because people don't make way for ambulances here. And it was dark and rainy and windy.

We went into the general section first. They soon learned Simon was an Aussie so they sent us to another section for foreigners (we had to walk to another building through the rain, so we were soaking wet). A doctor came across with us. They checked out the cut and gave a quote for treatment - 5000 RMB, or about AUS$800. Simon has some Chinese so argued a bit and said he'd rather go back to the other side with the general patients and get treatment there because its much cheaper. So the same doctor came back with us to the other side (through the rain again). We didn't have to wait, maybe because Simon's an Aussie. Anyway, the same doctor was with us the whole time and ended up doing the stitches, etc. He would have been the one to do exactly the same treatment if we got it done in the foreign section too. The price for the treatment in the general section.......220 RMB or AUS$40 (including 8RMB for a special bandaid that is waterproof, which was quite important considering the typhoon outside). Ridiculous. So you seriously need to have good medical insurance if you're a foreigner here - they hit you hard because most foreigners have a lot more money than locals, and a lot of the time their companies pay. I think if you didn't speak Chinese and didn't have a friend translating for you, you'd probably want to go in the foreign section though, even though its more expensive, because otherwise you have no idea what they're doing to you.