The last time I wrote about one of our mobile clinic buses was back in June 2106. Back then, we had two buses, one that was really old, and the newer one described in that post. These buses are incredibly useful for offsite clinic work at factories, malls and neighbourhoods. When patients can’t get to one of our clinics or hospitals, the clinic can come to them.
During COVID, the mobile bus fleet, joined by a couple of new ones, became incredibly important. They moved into communities and acted as testing stations and information hubs. Video conferences with specialists at the main hospital could be carried out. Also, care workers could fan out into some of the narrow warrens in some of the poorer communities to do testing and help move people to quarantine hospitels if required.
These buses became a link to communities that were not close to hospitals and clinics or had residents who could not afford to get to care facilities. The buses, along with delivery vehicles, also carried food to community members who were in quarantine in their houses.
The new buses have all the same features as the last new bus – digital x-ray with direct Internet access to a radiologist at our hospitals, a pharmacy, ultrasound, a dental chair and a whole lot of other stuff that essentially makes this vehicle a rolling full service clinic. Of course, there are doctors and nurses on board.
Mobile clinics can be very important in ensuring that community health care, particularly in disadvantaged areas, is properly provided. The new buses have extended our range across Bangkok and turned out to be critical during COVID.
And finally, let’s not forget, Dr. Look, the system’s mascot. He is there on the side of every bus letting people know that healthcare services are on the way to serve communities, factories and neighbourhoods that don’t have ready access to physical clinics or hospital facilities.
& one more thing: Because I’m stretched for time during this trip, I wanted to show you one more thing that probably wouldn’t make it into a post, at least during this visit. In the second to last slide of the set above, you’ll see an advertisement for one of our new buildings soon to start construction. It’s called the Healthy Building. (This is the subdued name. It was first meant to be called the Happy Building, but I thought better of that name and convinced the team to consider a new one.) But anyway, the reason I wanted to show you the picture is that even with all the modern technologies at the hospital – the high tech diagnostics, modern surgeries, sophisticated buses and so on – there is still room for street vendors on our hospital campus. These are the vendors, by the way, whose families got served by the mobile buses and were also served food at their homes or hospitels when they had COVID and were in quarantine. The photo shows two of the vendors but there are a lot more as shown in the last photo. These are the folks who have literally been on our campus serving great food – in competition with our restaurant – for as long as I can remember. Hopefully as modern as we continue to be, I hope they never leave.
Healthy building looks like it will be really cool looking, great name too. Wish we had some of those street vendors here!
I think it will be a pretty nice building. The street vendors here are awesome. They make amazing food, of a million varieties, at prices that are shockingly low.