Asan Medical Center Emerges as “Global Hospital” Attracting Foreign Patients with Serious Medical Conditions

Visited by 14,000 patients from abroad last year alone

Offering professional language, cultural, and religious services 

More than 130 telemedicine cases in the first half of 2022

Despite the spread of COVID-19, around 14,000 foreign patients visited Asan Medical Center (AMC) in Seoul last year. Even in 2020, when travel restrictions were imposed across the world following the outbreak of the disease, some 12,000 foreign patients received treatment at AMC. 

Jeon In-ho, Professor of Orthopedics and Director of International Programs at AMC, said, “Numerous foreign patients with serious medical conditions visited Asan Medical Center despite the need for long self-isolation, multiple COVID-19 tests, and the risk of infection during travel. The reason lies in [AMC’s] rich clinical experience and excellent treatment results.” 

■ 60,000 cases of highly difficult surgery per year for cancer, organ transplant, and heart disease

AMC ranked 3rd in the world in endocrinology, 4th in urology, 6th in gastroenterology, 7th in oncology, and 9th in neurosurgery in the World’s Best Specialized Hospitals 2023 published by Newsweek, an American weekly news magazine.

Many of the world’s top medical institutions, such as Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School, were among the top 10, which drew attention from the international medical community.

The fact that AMC’s five major specialties were listed in the leading group attests to the fact that the hospital has established itself as a world-class institution. In Korea, it ranked No. 1 in seven fields: endocrinology, urology, gastroenterology, neurosurgery, pulmonology, cardiology, and cardiac surgery. 

AMC performs more than 60,000 highly difficult surgeries annually, from cancer and heart surgery to organ transplantation. One out of every nine cancer surgeries in Korea is performed at AMC. 

Also, for cancer patients, AMC introduced interdisciplinary treatment in 2006 for the first time in Korea, and specialists from various departments have since been jointly treating more than 4,000 cancer patients annually. 

Recently, the CAR-T Center specializing in chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy has opened, and the CAR-T Interdisciplinary Therapy Clinic has been launched to treat patients with specialists from the Intensive Care Unit, Department of Neurology, and Department of Infectious Diseases, among others. 

AMS is also world-class in organ transplantation. As of September 2022, 6,666 living donor liver transplants and 1,344 liver transplants from brain-dead donors have been performed. It has also performed the largest number of living-donor liver transplantations, split liver transplantations, and ABO-incompatible liver transplantations worldwide.  

The one-year survival rate of liver transplant patients at AMC is 98%, even with the inclusion of severely ill patients who were difficult to treat. This is a figure that far exceeds the 89% of the United States, which has been renowned for organ transplantation excellence. AMC has also performed over 800 heart transplantations as of 2020, with the transplant survival rate being 95% at 1 year, 86% at 5 years, and 76% at 10 years—figures comparable to world-class levels. As for kidney transplantation, AMC recorded its 6,000th case in 2020. Currently, one out of every five kidney transplants in Korea is carried out at AMC. 

■ High level of satisfaction with medical services at AMC among foreign patients

With the number of foreign patients growing steadily, Asan Medical Center is also offering concierge services to minimize barriers to language, culture, and religion.

Concierge services, including interpretation services, are provided to foreign patients throughout the entire process, from inquiry to arrival, medical care, follow-up management, and handling of emergency situations. AMC currently offers such services tailored to China, Mongolia, Russia, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and Arab countries. In the case of Middle Eastern patients, halal food is provided to inpatients, and there is even a prayer room available.

AMC received an excellent score in the Korea Medical Service Experience and Satisfaction Survey 2021 conducted by the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. Foreign patients who had received treatment at domestic medical institutions were invited to participate in this survey. The satisfaction level of foreign patients who visited AMC was recorded at 92.6 points, exceeding the overall satisfaction level of 89.9 points. By category, AMC scored 91.6 points in “service quality,” an evaluation of the services provided by the medical institution (average score: 88.9 points), 94.4 points in “social responsibility,” an evaluation of whether the medical institution is doing its best to treat patients and ensure fairness (average score: 91.6 points), and 93 points in “customer satisfaction,” an evaluation of the level of cognitive and emotional satisfaction (average score: 90.9 points).

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, telemedicine services are being provided to a wider extent to better assist overseas patients who are unable to visit Korea. Following the launch of the service in Mongolia last year, AMC began to offer the service to patients in the Middle East, Vietnam, Russia, Australia, and Romania this year. In the first half of this year alone, there were about 130 telemedicine cases. 

Telemedicine for foreign patients consists of a pre-consultation stage, which involves a case review and medical image analysis and prescription, a second opinion stage, where a medical specialist specializing in the disease provides a written opinion, and an international remote collaboration stage, in which the patient, local medical staff, and medical staff at AMC communicate with one another via videoconferencing. 

Last year, 102 patients from Mongolia were provided telemedicine services on a trial basis. The vast majority of the cases concerned serious diseases such as liver cancer, liver cirrhosis, brain tumor, pancreatic cancer, and lung disease, and 13 patients decided to visit AMC for treatment.

Based on the pilot program, telemedicine was deemed to substantially help overseas patients devise effective treatment plans. 

Meanwhile, Asan Medical Center plans to operate a global medical collaboration center to provide systematic preliminary and follow-up care and management services to patients from outside the country and to expand its telemedicine services.

“We will continue to expand our global network by working together with leading institutions abroad. We expect foreign patients’ access to medical care and the quality of medical services to improve in the future,” said Director Jeon.