Hospitals Galore

Merrainiacs:

At least the temperature is up today. I never thought of the 20's as warm but after yesterday, it's a welcome change! Plus Jared didn't bring any hot cocoa today.

So today we had a lesson in the planning of hospitals and what it takes to get a hospital built around the world. One of our customers asked our firm to conduct a study of six different countries where we looked at locations, management structure, costs, construction timelines, patient access, specialization, the role of government in the decision making process and profitability. This customer has a good reason to be focused on the international market, and our leadership team shared the results with the Merrainiacs once the results were published. In short, I never appreciated how good it is to be an American. We have an abundance of hospitals of all sizes, shapes, specialties and functions. Try finding a town in this country of 75,000 people without a hospital. You'll have a tough time, and yet some of the countries we looked at have cities of 250,000+ without a hospital. Some have no hospitals for hundreds of miles, a scary proposition at best. And while some countries allow hospitals to be built by private citizens with limited oversite, others require majority approval amongst their legislature and take years and years....even decades to get these facilities approved. The situation gets much worse when we start to look at mental health facilities as many countries don't even recognize mental health as something that needs to be treated. It's downright scary if you ask me and makes me grateful to be an American.

Merrainiac