Thank you, Gangneung Koryo Hospital. You are everything that healthcare should be in a civilized country.

Thank you, 강릉고려병원 / Gangneung Koryo Hospital for being everything that healthcare should be in a civilized country. Here's an actual case study from 2022 September.

64-year old bald foreigner presents complaining of right foot pain and swelling. He speaks Korean, but it's archaic. Sounds like it's from about 30 or 40 years ago. Says he can't hear well. Please speak loudly when you call his name.

We get his passport and check him in. We try to send him upstairs to the 정형외과, but he has no idea what we're saying. He knows it's a particular department, but he has no idea which one. We have noticed this with foreigners before. Even if they speak Korean, they don't know their medical terminology--not unless they've worked in a hospital. We walk him on up there and sit him down.

Before too long, we call him into the doctor's office for a visual exam. Then we send him down to the X-ray department. With assistance from our skilled X-ray team, he handles that part okay, and reports back up to Orthopedics. Shortly after, he sits with the doctor and gets to look at the X-rays. All good!!!

We send him back downstairs, where he wanders around a bit talking about medication. That's not the way it works, Old Bro. You pay first, and then you'll get your medication. We bring him over to the right desk, and he pays his bill with cash. Seems a bit old school, this guy, but whatever. We send him to the drugstore, a bit concerned about whether he can find it at the back of the building, but he assures us that he can. Mutters something about being deaf but not blind.

On the camera, we watch him go into the private drugstore (not our hospital drugstore), where the kind shopkeeper redirects him. He goes into our hospital pharmacy, pays his money, and listens intently as the pharmacist gives him instructions on how to take the seven-day course of medication. The old guy either understands, or pretends to understand, and it's not a big deal either way because we label the medicine so well that it's nearly impossible to screw it up.

Last time we saw him on camera, he was sitting in front of the hospital taking his first round of medication. We watched him puzzle it out, and he finally got it right. Shouldn't have took him so long, but he did get it done.

Total time for his visit: 1.5 hours

Total cost, including seven-day course of medication: U.S.$51

Patient status: Just a random old foreigner off the street. No insurance. Not even a telephone number.

Gangneung Koryo Hospital, where we provide decent healthcare to all at a reasonable cost.

My hearing sucks in public spaces. I continue to push paper at them to improve communication. For those with children who speak Korean, show them this and tell them: "If you don't spend the time, you'll end up writing like this, and it's pretty embarrassing."

No more of my dumbass explanations. Just the numbers.
20220903