I've had two recent visits to the Tai Wai Union Hospital lately. The first was inpatient care - my sister gave birth to a healthy, baby boy! The second was outpatient care with a general practitioner. Long post but hopefully helpful to all those Yelper mamas-to-be!
Union is one of the cheaper private hospitals in Hong Kong, Australian accredited, and there is a very convenient online price list that you can refer to. My sister did the package deal for a natural birth, but noticed that if you opt for a private room, the doctor's fee also goes up. This doesn't really make much sense to me, but it applies to most other hospitals. For inpatient care, the private room provided for my sister was spacious (despite being the smallest choice, it comfortably fit around 10 of her friends and family). The toilet had a shower with amenities from Kiehl's Natural Skin Care collection.
Another good point about Union is that they deal with the placenta and cord blood collection very well. Our doula informed us that this wasn't always the case in other hospitals. Union hospital was very professional about this and took care of my sister's placenta until the doula could take it the following day.
As for the labour, there were a few issues: the first is that the maternity ward on the 3rd floor is very bureaucratic, so my sister had to undergo her contractions in another room with 6 other women in labour while she waited for her file to be sorted out. She was also not allowed to walk around, stand up, or sit on the exercise ball we had brought along - which she felt made her contractions worse. When she was given the epidural, she was put in her own room which meant she could finally rest.
When the baby was born, the nursing staff on the 11th floor (private rooms) were very good with after-care, providing us with some baby goodies and teaching us how to swaddle, hold the baby, feed etc. The only incident was when they told us that the baby was not allowed to stay in the private room on the first night unless there was a mid-wife from an agency present.
The outpatient care/ER procedure at Union is similar to other hospitals: sign-up with your ID card, fill out a quick form with your address and next of kin. You are swiftly transported to the triage section, where they take your temperature, blood pressure, and ask what the problem is. Your ticket is put in one of three bands, depending on the urgency of your medical issue. My issue wasn't very urgent - I had sebborheic dermatitis that had spread from my scalp to my face and ears, horribly irritating but not life-threatening.
So I waited for about 4 hours before I managed to see a GP. He spoke English well, and a nurse was present to help observe the physical symptoms. He answered all my questions, and didn't prescribe anything that wasn't necessary. Some clinics just overload you with antibiotics and pills that sometimes end up making you worse off than before!
If you can, though, I would suggest just getting the prescribed medicines elsewhere, as the internal pharmacy is more expensive. read more