The jury is still out on the success of this drive, but the island's two main private hospitals have been betting heavily that it will work.

Phuket International Hospital is adding a building which will provide 50 more beds and five more operating theatres when it is completed in October 2007.

Bangkok Hospital Phuket (formally known as Bangkok Phuket Hospital) started earlier, and now has 150 beds plus eight VIP rooms similar to high-end hotel suites. Renovation of older parts of the hospital will be complete about six months from now.

Quality

How can patients be sure that they will get high-quality treatment? Piyarat Kulvanich, marketing manager of Phuket International Hospital, says that formal quality assurance comes in the form of examinations by organizations such as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, certification by the International Standards Organization and regular quality checks by international health insurance companies.

She also points out that doctors practicing in Phuket's hospitals have usually trained in the US, Japan or other centers of excellence. "So you can say that the standard of our doctors here is international-level."

A third form of quality assurance is the many referrals the hospital gets from satisfied patients who had an accident or some other medical problem while on Phuket, and were happy to pass the word on the word to their friends.

Khun Piyanooch Ananpakdee

Some 200,000 people have been treated at the Bangkok Hospital Phuket in the first eleven months of this year, says Piyanooch Ananpakdee, the hospital's senior marketing communications manager.

"Of those, Thais were the highest number, as you would expect. Apart from them, the top five nationalities, in order, were British, German, American, Australian and French.

"Most of them came to use our dental clinic, which they find is of a very high standard and much less expensive than similar services back home."

The Time Factor

So a simple equation makes Phuket an ideal place for people to have a health checkup, or dental, medical or surgical treatment, with a holiday thrown in: high-quality service and low prices.

But there is a third factor that is important: time. In some countries, free government medical treatment may be high-quality, but most often there is a huge downside: long queues.

To receive treatment for certain non-life-threatening conditions, patients may have to wait months, or even years.

In Thailand, on the other hand, you can arrange for high-quality yet inexpensive treatment the same day.

How much does it cost to get immediate professional treatment? Tooth cleaning costs roughly 800-1,500 baht. Tooth whitening in Phuket is around 8,000-12,000 baht. Those prices are about one fifth of what you would expect to pay in Europe or the US.

At the Phuket International Hospital, a full health checkup for men over 40 costs about 8,100 baht and includes 21 items such as chest X-ray, complete blood count and prostate check. For women over 40 the cost is 9,900 baht, with the checkup covering 22 items including a whole-abdomen ultrasound, diabetes-FBS and PAP Smear.

For comparison, there are about 40 baht to the USD, about 70 to the pound sterling and about 47 to the Euro.

Cosmetic surgery has become good business for Phuket's private hospitals. Here again, the high quality, the non-existent queues and the wallet-friendly prices are the deciding factors.

We will have more on this topic in our next edition.