Gareth+-+Memo+-+28

__MEMO28: Describing Places, to Make an Analytic Point__

I like the shifting of personal spaces in the elevator, the reaction of standing facing the crowd when expectation is that we face the door. I think that the examination room of a doctor’s office gets attention because it is the site of negotiation; it is where people meet medicine. But the recovery room is a place people try to forget, the hospital room is a space to be avoided, and few spend extra time there. Therefore the challenge in imaging or creating an image for a hospital as a desirable destination is that much more interesting, and that is what the medical tourism industry tries to do. When they talk about the hospital space desirable for medical tourists they balance the demand to be a tourist site and a medical site. Images presented on websites frequently expose two forms of space kept private by US hospitals. To make this contrasting image work, to symbolize the rigorous highly technological and compatible with modern biomedical science part they image the CAT scan, the MRI, the surgical suite, and they also show the orchids, the queen sized non-hospital style beds, the scenic view, the tropical beach and the exotic local person. The websites for medical tourism balance stock images of doctors that are often white, or so garbed in blue surgical gowns as to be ethnically invisible, with support staff, nurses, and massage girls, that transform the distant space into a mix of familiar medical authority and familiar tourism. This digital space is mirrored by a real difference between the sort of hospital room designed for US patients at home and for medical tourists abroad. Medical tourism suites are designed like hospital rooms, not privileging function over form. The different profit ratio per patient suggests more space available per patient, and private rooms are more common. This is made possible not only through the different ‘value’ of each patient, but also due to the emphasis on surgical care with shorter recovery time, and therefore no need of a highly controlled sterile environment to be held for long periods. The rooms often have a second bedroom to accommodate spouse, or children, or companion, because medical tourists are perceived as not liking to travel alone. Health insurance companies in the US that have been accommodating medical tourists have emphasized this point by extending to cover travel costs of a guest or spouse, because recovery is believed to go more smoothly with a familiar face. These rooms often are provided hotel style amenities, such as room service, global satalite television, and a concierge like assistant service, alternativly provided either by the hospital or the travel agency, to chauffer the family while surgery is taking place, and to make the trip more hospitable. These images, and these practices construct a very different sort of place than a US hospital room, frequently feared, but always sterilely institutional in design. Brief visiting hours are replaced by around the clock companionship that replaces the American model of an alien space near to home, with some semblance of the familiar while far away.