Kuwait Times

Published Date: October 30, 2009
By Hussain Al-Qatari, Staff writer

The debate about private versus public health care has been quite a heated one especially during the past few years. The majority of people would tell you without hesitation that private hospitals and clinics are much better than government ones. The reasons people give are the fact that they are faster in service, and that the staff is nicer to patients, and they are overall more efficient.

My personal experience in one of the biggest private hospitals proved otherwise. Last week, one of my friends called me shortly after midnight and asked if I can take him to the hospital. He had a fever, a runny nose, and was constantly coughing and sneezing. He was sure that it was nothing but the seasonal flu, but home remedies did not work and with the swine flu scare that has been taking over the country, I insisted that he must see a doctor just to be on the safe side.

We first went to a private hospital in Salmiya, but the waiting room was packed with people. We waited for half an hour, and we still had over 20 patients ahead of us. The fact that a patient threw up all over himself and on the floor in front of us did not help in the waiting process, so we decided to leave the place and go to another hospital.

We arrived about 15 minutes later to another private hospital near Kuwait City. The parking lot was not as packed as the previous one, so we assumed that there aren't many patients on queue in the emergency room. As we approached the registration desk, we were greeted with a clerk who had an annoyed look as soon as he saw us. He asked us very dryly to wait until he's done doing the paperwork at his hand. We waited for about ten minutes. I asked him again, this time he took the phone number and typed it on
his computer, and then told us to head to the emergency room.

The emergency room had about ten patients waiting for the doctor, and perhaps six nurses who were chitchatting with each other. I asked one of them if she can help us, and her answer was "No, the doctors are not here yet, you have to wait.

So we waited for a good hour, during which the crowd doubled in size, until two doctors finally arrived. When my friend's turn came, the doctor diagnosed him with stomach influenza, prescribed him some pills and said that he's good to go. We asked the doctor repeatedly if he can please just check and see if he has the H1N1 virus, but he kept shrugging off the questions. "How can you be sure if you haven't even checked?" my friend asked him, and the doctor's reply was, "This is my job, I know what I am doin
g, I am the one who went to medical school.

We threw the prescription in the trash after having paid a good KD 12. The next day we drove to the public clinic near his house in Salwa, where the doctor used a swab to swipe the inside of his throat, reassured him that he only has the seasonal flu, gave him painkillers and antibiotics and sent him home.

After this experience I am no longer sure if I trust the big and fancy private hospitals anymore. If we had gone to a public hospital, we would not have had to pay any money and we would have had the treatment needed. Are the standards of private hospitals declining, or did we just happen to catch them at the wrong moment?