When it comes to health care, the reputation of the Cleveland Clinic is as good as it gets.
The main campus in the United States, founded in 1921, is ranked fourth in the country and its heart programme is considered to be number one.
It has been at the forefront of advances in medicine, making headlines in 2008 when doctors performed the world’s first near-total face transplant.
Each year it records more than five million patient visits, including some from the UAE.
Abdulla Abdul Aziz Al Shamsi, executive administrative officer of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD), is adamant that UAE residents will soon receive the same level of care when the local branch opens next year.
“The idea was to bring the quality of care that we know is already available elsewhere around the world and have it be a part of this community within the UAE,” he said. “More specifically, to plug a gap within the healthcare market and complement the system that is already in place.
“To bring the culture of a successful and most prominent healthcare facility in the United States and be able to recreate that culture elsewhere is our basis.”
Foreign healthcare organisations are not new to the UAE. Many of the largest public and private institutions are operated by or partnered with international groups.
Abu Dhabi’s Tawam Hospital and Al Rahba Hospital are run “in affiliation” with John Hopkins Medicine, another of the leading groups in the US. Sheikh Khalifa Medical City has been managed by the Cleveland Clinic since 2007.
The new hospital will take the relationship much farther, offering a potentially more sustainable investment in a foreign brand.
CCAD will be the first stand-alone Cleveland Clinic campus outside the US and Canada.
Eighty per cent of its physician leaders, including heads of departments, are coming from the Cleveland Clinic in the US and a third of doctors are either current or former Cleveland Clinic employees.
Designed and developed by the Mubadala Development Company, the 364-bed facility wants to take health care in Abu Dhabi to another level.
“The idea is that there is a lot of money that is spent by the Government on providing care for UAE nationals, specifically providing care for them abroad,” said Mr Al Shamsi. “The opportunity ... is to reinstate that care back as an option here in Abu Dhabi, and this relationship is allowing us to be able to deliver that health care, but also create something that has never been done anywhere around the world.”
The UAE reportedly spends about Dh7.5 billion a year sending Emiratis abroad for medical treatment. Top destinations include the US, UK, Germany and India.
According to the Dubai Health Authority, most seek oncology, cardiology, paediatric and orthopaedic services.
CCAD, when it opens, will have five centres of excellence in heart and vascular, neurological, digestive diseases, eye care, and respiratory and critical care institutes.
Other institutes will include surgical subspecialities, emergency medicine, anaesthesiology and pathology and laboratory medicine.
Dr Tomislav Mihaljevic, chief of staff and head of the heart and vascular institute at CCAD, said the opportunity for patients to receive adequate follow-up care should sway them towards seeking treatment at home rather than abroad.
“One of the real challenges when people from any country travel abroad to seek, in particular, very complex services is, after they are delivered, they often require a continuum of care which is very difficult to maintain at a distance.”
CCAD is keen to stress that while its physical presence is far from its home, the culture of its facility is basically the same, but with a few cultural tweaks.
There are already 2,000 staff living in Abu Dhabi ahead of the hospital’s opening next year. A further 1,000 are expected to arrive by April. Almost 60 per cent of them are biligual or trilingual.
Like any successful corporate business, Cleveland Clinic invests a lot in its staff – who it refers to as caregivers. There will be weekly complimentary yoga sessions and smoking-cessation programmes available to everyone.
These caregivers, from the front-of-house redcoats, who wear distinctive red coats, to the heads of departments and the 20-plus medical translators, will also undergo a sort of culturalisation before the facility opens.
“We are also very much in a serving leader mentality,” Mr Al Shamsi said. “That is very much a direct relationship to what you would find culturally and religiously here in the UAE. But at the same time, from a physical standpoint, we are making sure that in having 50-plus nationalities that the culturalisation of these individuals as they come in and become part of the organisation is directly linked to experiences that we can provide. Leadership by example.
“When it comes to how we’ve interfaced with the cultural values of the UAE, we very much built it into the thousands of hours of collaboration ... in forming this partnership and developing the floor plans that now make up the facility.”
From a physical perspective, the patient rooms are large, allowing for families to visit, and there are VIP floors, separate male and female waiting areas, and privacy pods in the main reception area.
The food is not replicated from the US, Dr Mihaljevic said, and the menu is part of the “cultural appropriateness”.
“A very important part of the culture anywhere in the world is the food, and that is no exception here. The menu has been designed to be primarily healthy and to take care of the patient’s nutritional needs.
“It has been modified in such a way that also addresses certain habits and tastes.”
Since ground was broken on Al Maryah Island in January 2008, very little information has been made public about the facility. Even now, no media has been allowed beyond the main reception area, and the opening date is being kept tightly under wraps.
It has also yet to release any information about who will be eligible to use the hospital. Details of insurance plans that will be accepted and details of pricing structures are also still under wraps.
Mr Al Shamsi is adamant that it is targeting the Abu Dhabi market before it thinks about attracting patients from farther afield.
“We are going for Abu Dhabi, UAE first,” he said. “Again it’s plugging a gap that’s there in the market and hopefully providing something the market hasn’t seen. If you think of the cost of care of sending somebody abroad and the preference for any individual ... being able to go somewhere that is considered home is a lot different than having to get on an airplane and having to fly wherever it is you have to fly. This is the opportunity. Give people the choice.”
At the moment, health care in the UAE is much less transparent than in some other developed countries. There are no detailed reports of medical outcomes, which include methodology and country averages. This makes it very difficult for patients to make informed decisions about their own care. Most people choose to rely on word of mouth or travel abroad to a facility that has a proven track record.
This is something that CCAD management says it will tackle.
“Cleveland Clinic was the first hospital in the US to publicly share its outcomes with the broader public, that happened approximately 20 years ago,” said Dr Mihaljevic. “At that time it was unheard of, the results of the outcomes of healthcare institutions were not shared in the public. Since that time, Cleveland Clinic continues to transparently publish our own outcomes for every single aspect of our healthcare organisation.
“We believe that transparency fits into our mission of providing the best care possible for patients. Patients have a right to know, and we have an obligation to share our results with them.
Since the Cleveland Clinic began releasing its outcomes, other institutions and regulators followed.
Making the data public, Dr Mihaljevic said, has a “phenomenal effect” on the healthcare environment. The data includes details such as waiting time for a lung transplant as compared with the national average, survival rates after heart disease diagnoses, and survival rates after cancer diagnoses and treatment.
No such comprehensive data is publicly available for health facilities in the UAE at the moment.
“It’s quite simple, track record is what changes people’s perception,” said Mr Al Shamsi, discussing how CCAD will attract patients who would previously have gone abroad for treatment. “Track record in the expectation of what we are delivering, track record in our ability to not only talk about providing the best care but also be able to deliver on that.”
munderwood@thenational.ae
