In a recent newspaper story Bumrungrad Hospital CEO Dennis Brown talked about the hospital’s expansion plans which include a budget of five billion baht. He mentioned that they are considering opening some clinics in Vietnam in the future and they continue to have a few engagements in other countries involving hospital management, but that the focus is primarily on the local market in Thailand.

This is consistent with some earlier unofficial comments we heard from the person charged with social media marketing for Bumrungrad. Those comments went a little farther, however, asserting that not only is the focus on local expansion but that the focus is primarily on serving Thai patients versus arriving medical tourists and expats. With over 400,000 international patients being served every year by the medical centers at Bumrungrad that might seem a little surprising but that is still substantially less than half of their total number of patients.

Many people consider that the medical tourism patients are the most lucrative since there is less price pressure coming from them due to their being used to much higher prices in the west or the lack of availability of quality treatment in their own countries. But that ignores the fact that there are plenty of people in Thailand who can afford private medical care, perhaps even a higher percentage than in more developed countries. So serving the local market of Thais seeking private health care continues to be a major focus of Bumrungrad and indeed most of the other private hospitals.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 31st, 2011 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Hospitals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.