TODAY

The following is what Dr Myat Thu, Managing Director of Asia Royal Hospital, Asia Royal Service Co Ltd said in an interview with TODAY.

How it’s started…

Asia Royal grew out of Royal clinic that I opened in 1985 when I was a Final Part II medical student. The present clinic building was completed in 1999 and the clinic was opened on 18^th March, 2000. At first there was no immediate success, but in 2002 venerable Thamyinnya Sayadaw came for medical treatment, we treated him with the utmost care, free of charge. Following that we began to have more success, taking more patients.

In 2003 we had Daw Aung San Suu Kyi now the State Counsellor, as an inpatient, and that contributed to our greater success. Another contributing factor is the good organization of the Asia Royal Company and the cooperative effort of its board directors and employees. It is also attributable to our faith in the Buddhist spirit of goodwill and loving kindness.

These days we have foreign and joint-venture hospitals in Myanmar. What have you got in mind regarding marketing strategy and expending services.

We’ve got more and rival players, so marketing has become a very important part of health care business. We’re seeing hospitals operating in joint venture with foreigners.

We want to do marketing. Whatever we do, it’s patient safety first with us. We’re the first among hospitals in Myanmar doing the coronary artery widening surgery. After a temporary break for various reasons, we took it up again in 2013, and within 3 years we managed to operate on over 700 patients.

At present we’re offering medical checkup service to about 200 employees from the state and public sectors. We also have a neurosurgeon from the US working full time with us. A rehabilitation unit is now in the pipeline.

We’re also thinking of upgrading the heart centre and adding 100 beds for in-patients. Our business, though primarily concerned with health care, has as its top consideration patient safety and staff competency.

The following is what Dr Thein Zaw Advisor/Consultant (Risk Management & Medicolegal) said on upgrading the clinic to an international standard.

When members of foreign diplomatic staff and NGO fall ill they demand international- standard treatment. The ISO-2009 certification is our advantage. There are only two clinics in Yangon certified that way, including Asia Royal. This certification involves a lot of testing and checking. At that time the ISO men told us to work for Health Safety Environment (HSE). We then already had that requirement met and we managed to present it to them. Now we’re trying to qualify for ISO-2015 and we believe we can achieve that.

In future we’ll strive for JCI (Joint Commission International) a higher-grade certification. For the moment we’re trying to make our laboratory qualify for ISO certification. There are strigent regulations laboratories. I’m confident that with cooperative effort among us, we can have an international-standard clinic with 300 beds.