Visiting the doctor in Moscow

We go to a Russian clinic, rather than to an expat one such as the 'EMC' (European Medical Centre) . We do this out of principal and the EMC charge one hundred and fifty euro just for a doctors consultation (two hundred and ten green backs). If you are a rich expat or have your medical insurance paid for directly, then that's fine go there and make the owners even richer than they are now. I personally refuse to and would only go there in an absolute emergency.

I think most expats that go there, including the clinics Russian patients, must have 'idiot' or 'rich' tattooed across their foreheads, although to be fair to them, they don't have much choice, its that or a state hospital. That clinic is literally printing its own money. If it only saw 20 patients a day it would make 3,000 euro a day, times 5 days a week, equals 15,000 euro a week, times 4 weeks per month, equals 60,000 euro a month. I am sure they see more than 20 patients a day and this excludes tests etc. This translates as 51,000 GBP a month or 84,000 USD a month for the clinic, less staff wages. This is one clinic in Moscow, there are other private clinics charging similar prices. No one questions it, no one complains. The insurance pays it for some. Life goes on. Sickness is big money and big business the world over.

At the clinic we go to, its a lot cheaper, clean modern and well run. On arrival you have to take off your coat, leaving it with a coat woman, who issues you with a numbered plastic hook token for when you collect your coat. Push chairs have to be left at the door and two bored, fat looking security guards eye you with great suspicion. You have to then register and go to the required floor and wait. Its a bit hap hazard, people sit on chairs against the walls, like runners on starting blocks at the start of a race, waiting for the starter gun to go off. People guard their place with killer territorial instinct, waiting for the doctors door to open and to let them in. I went there today with my kid on the metro, to see a generalist doctor for a bad cold. Getting there on the metro, negotiating steps and escalators is a test in itself.You have to go up the escalator backwards, holding the push chair facing down. Russian metro escalators are steep stairs that rise up or down into a bottomless airless abyss. Hold on tight to the chair as its rather dangerous.

My point of writing about a doctors visit, is mainly to air my suspicion on the medication that the doctors give out. In my own country, you almost have to beg to get any form of prescription drug, while here, they hand them out freely. You leave the doctors and then leave the pharmacy, with packets of pills and syrups. I left today, with four boxes of tablets and one syrup for my cold. One box was antibiotics, which I am sure was all I needed and maybe the syrup for my cough. I noticed that the syrup the doctor gave me, is exactly the same one as they always give my son when he has a cough. Leaving the doctors here with vast quantities of pills and syrups is not unlike Slovakia, there doctors prescribe with enormous generosity like in Moscow. I have a theory that doctors get kick back, commission payments from the drug suppliers. I cannot prove this theory or provide any data but its just my feeling.

Having said all of this, in my own experience,  I feel treatment here is far better than back home in my own country. You get what you need including tests, x-rays, etc with minimum wait or aggro. The only down side is you must pay. We have insurance, but have to send off claim forms to get paid back, we often wait many months to get some or all of our money back from the insurance company.

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