When Former First lady Lucy Kibaki checked in at Bupa Cromwell Hospital in London over the weekend, she was immediately given an identification bracelet to wear on the wrist.
There was also at least one nurse who helped complete her admission process.
The hospital said issuing the bracelet is standard procedure. Apart from identification details, they may write on it medicines or dietary supplements the patient may be taking and specify allergies.
“More like a hotel than a hospital. All the staff were extremely helpful and friendly. Overall a very high class of patient care. Oh…and the food was great!” a former patient wrote on the hospital's website.
A patient's room inside Bupa Cromwell Hospital in London. Photo/COURTESY
Cromwell offers VIP services to patients who can raise the money.
At least half of them come from the Middle East where governments are ready to pay the bill for any medical care that is not available in their home countries.
A 2015 report by Laing Buisson, health care researchers from London, said patients from the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, drove almost 23 per cent revenues of London hospitals last year.
Forty per cent of Cromwell's revenue is from Middle East clients.
Over its 34 years of existence, the 128-bed hospital has served rich and famous clients from across the world, including Mama Lucy.
Others include former footballer and alcoholic George Best, who died there. He repeatedly received treatment for procedures including a liver transplant.
The Bupa Cromwell Hospital in London. Photo/COURTESY
A post on Wikipedia, probably posted after the hospital's nod, says musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan of Pakistan was admitted to the hospital on August 11,
1997. He passed through London on the way to Los Angeles in the USA for a kidney transplant.
Khan
died from sudden cardiac arrest at the hospital on August 16 that year, aged 48.
Nigerian musician and playwright Chief Hubert Ogunde died at the hospital in 1990.
The hospital was once owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family. It announced
in 2008 that it had been bought by private health and care specialist Bupa and renamed 'Bupa Cromwell Hospital'.
The hospital is known for managing chest conditions.
"Our research tells us that private patients want more high quality health services in London, particularly in cancer and cardiac care,” Fergus Kee, managing director of Bupa membership, told the Telegraph newspaper in 2008.
Provision of luxury healthcare has always been a touchy issue for hospitals.
Some doctors find the practice harmless while others describe it as unethical, but all deem luxury health care necessary.