Hospital Tour

 

Today we went on a tour of a national public hospital. The name of the hospital is Hospital Mexico and it was the first hospital constructed in Costa Rica. Costa Rica decided to name the hospital after Mexico after they receiving much help from the northern country. Mexico allowed Costa Rican residents to attend medical school in their countries because 40 years ago Costa Rica had no hospital let alone a medical school. Mexico also helped fund the building and helped with the design of the structure. This is a public hospital, which means that all services are payed through the Caja or national insurance. Costa Ricans automatically receive Caja once employed or if someone in their family is employed. Overall the hospital was not so distant from public hospitals in the United States. The facility, which was built 40 years ago has reached its capacity. It felt very crowded, especially in the emergency room. The emergency room sees 3,000 people a week and while only 80 are admitted the halls ways were lined with hospital beds with very sick people. They had three trauma rooms that they squeezed two people into at a time (which is a little scary). Overall, there was a lack of technology and hand sanitizer in the hospital. In the United States hospitals have a hand sanitizer inside each room and several in the hall ways. The hand sanitizers we did see in Hospital Mexico were empty. There was also a lack of privacy for patients in their rooms. For example, labor and delivery was just an open room with 6 women in labor all out in the open. They also don't do any epidurals for labor. I didn't catch the reason, but I think it is because there is a lack of anesthesiologists. We also got to view the intensive care unit, which was very similar to the intensive care units at home. It was the only area that was air conditioned in the hospital and very clean. The biggest problem with the Costa Rican health care system is that there are not enough specialists or hospitals to treat the public. If you need to see a specialist and you don't have private insurance you may have to wait 6 months to 2 years for an appointment at Hospital Mexico.