South Korea Medical Tourism Diary. Part 4: Wooridul Spine Hospital

Continued from Part 3: Yeson Voice Examination Center

November 27, 2007

For me the highlight of Day 1 in Korea was our visit to the Woodirul Spine Hospital, a large, successful group of five hospitals throughout Korea focused purely on the spine. Two more locations are set to open in Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur. I'd never heard of the place and I'll have to follow up independently to find out its reputation, but I got the impression that they really know what they're doing. There were signs throughout the hospital explaining and reinforcing their approach and the introductory video they showed us was quite impressive and well-tailored to an American audience.

A few things stood out:

• A very strong team approach to surgical planning. No one surgeon decides what approach should be used
• Strong collaboration among the various hospital locations via academic video-conference every Friday
• The pride the physicians had in their minimally invasive techniques and disdain for sloppy practice

From what I was told, the influence of device salesmen is a lot lower than in the US, which has to be a good thing.

In 2006 they had 557 non-Korean patients, and have had 670 so far in 2007. About half of these patients are coming from overseas and the rest are expats living in Korea. This has come without any particular international outreach.

The hospital seemed lukewarm on the idea of international accreditation. My sense was that they were concerned about having to change their successful practice to meet some mandate. Judging from what I saw that may be a reasonable stance.

See Part 5: Ajou University Hospital