A Royal Gift of Tower-ing Impact

“Above and beyond” patient services paved the way for the UAE’s generosity.

Months after the United Arab Emirates endowed Johns Hopkins Medicine with a momentous contribution that catapulted the hospital’s $1.2 billion redevelopment plan toward reality, the confetti is still flying.

The gift, one of the most significant Hopkins has received to date, will help fund a 913,000-square-foot cardiovascular and critical care tower that will be named for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who formed the UAE in 1971 and ruled it until his death in 2004.

JHM International’s above-and-beyond patient services team is known around the hospital—and the world—for its personalized attention to everything from appointment scheduling and financial planning to interpreting and arranging travel.

The team has tailored care for patients from the UAE since at least 1988. And when it comes to opinion leaders such as the royal family, “the service expectations are above and beyond any standard,” explains Raffaella Molteni, director of international patient services. “Our coordinators work day and night, weekends included, to manage and facilitate any possible need.”

The first large-scale visit was in 2005, when a high-ranking royal arrived for surgery with an entourage of more than 70 people. Since then, similar groups have returned each year for care ranging from orthopedic surgery to dermatology consults.

The preparations begin months in advance, says Wafik Gobrial, who orchestrates the often two-month-long events. Schedulers arrange back-to-back appointments for as many as 30 family members. On Marburg, facilities experts upgrade the private suites with new TVs and familiar satellite channels, laptops, artwork, curtains and Oriental rugs. The team hires additional help—private duty nurses and interpreters among them. Everyone from kitchen staff and housekeeping to nurses and medical staff are briefed on cultural do’s and don’ts. “Our team knows that all will go well,” says Gobrial. “It has to.”

One can make an argument that this kind of special treatment is reserved for the wealthy and that the expertise in our incredible medical institutions should be made available to all areas of our own country, but make no mistake, it is in the US that medicine is making historic break-throughs, not countries with socialized medicine.

Michael Moore won’t go to Cuba when he needs healthcare, nor should Americans buy his argument of socialized medicine..

Let’s stay on topic and not demean and debase the comment area of this blog, and get into the same hot water MM’s site did last time.

I can imagine a couple scenarios off hand:

First, a run on raft building materials, with the Cubans realizing just how much food we have here in the States and just having to get here to get some.

or…

Cubans taking a look at Moore and deciding to stay in Cuba, food ration card and all, because if eating so much makes one look anything like old Mikey, they’d rather stay hungry and oppressed.

Someday, we might learn…ain’t hold’n my breath.