How good are the medical centers, hospitals and health clinics in Puerto Vallarta, and how close are they?
Armando Contreras - Galvan Real Estate and Services
The medical centers, hospitals, and health clinics in Puerto Vallarta are very helpful, close in proximity, and give very good service. Just recently, a client of mine wanted to see houses but before he did, he went to the beach and then he fell. I took him to the local clinic and after being seen by a doctor there, I asked him if he still wanted to see the houses. He said, “You know what? This doctor is a miracle. Yes, I feel so much better. Let’s go look at the...The medical centers, hospitals, and health clinics in Puerto Vallarta are very helpful, close in proximity, and give very good service. Just recently, a client of mine wanted to see houses but before he did, he went to the beach and then he fell. I took him to the local clinic and after being seen by a doctor there, I asked him if he still wanted to see the houses. He said, “You know what? This doctor is a miracle. Yes, I feel so much better. Let’s go look at the houses.” In my area in Rivera Nayarit (just northwest of Puerto Vallarta), we have good clinics. In the Puerto Vallarta area, we have big hospitals such as Amerimed that are equipped to handle pretty much any medical issue one may have. Most of the people from Canada and the US who come here for medical tourism in Amerimed or in Hospital San Javier would tell you that the quality of the hospitals and medical care here is as you would expect it to be in the US. We have cardiac surgeons here but we don’t have many so when there are lots of patients who come to Mexico to have cardiac surgeries, they go to Guadalajara (a large, cosmopolitan city about 4 and a half hours away by car), Tepic (capital of the state of Nayarit, about 3 hours away by car), or to other big cities close by.
Guadalajara is known worldwide for their good hospitals and medical schools. I have a good friend who went to a medical school and got her degree in Guadalajara, and is now practicing as a physician in the US.
(Amerimed hospital in a parade in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted January 8, 2016
Paul Mayer - Vallarta Food Tours
There are a lot of medical centers, hospitals and health clinics in Puerto Vallarta because Puerto Vallarta is a big expat community and medical tourism is on the rise here. There are a lot of expats in Puerto Vallarta. If you’re in the downtown area, you have a choice of about five or six health clinics, medical centers and hospitals within a 15-20-minute drive. We had our both kids delivered here in Puerto Vallarta, which is our only experience of...
There are a lot of medical centers, hospitals and health clinics in Puerto Vallarta because Puerto Vallarta is a big expat community and medical tourism is on the rise here. There are a lot of expats in Puerto Vallarta. If you’re in the downtown area, you have a choice of about five or six health clinics, medical centers and hospitals within a 15-20-minute drive. We had our both kids delivered here in Puerto Vallarta, which is our only experience of needing to hospitals here, but for us, these experiences in hospitals were first class.
When we had our two kids, we didn’t have any thoughts of needing to go to a different city somewhere. In fact, we even though we received better care than we would have in the US mainly because we had a private room and three doctors, each of whom had one or two nurses. It was a huge team, and we ended up paying $2,500 for a full normal delivery and two nights of stay in the hospital, as opposed to $20,000 on average in the United States. It was a great experience.
Our second child was born six weeks premature, so there were complications, such as in his lungs. Our baby ended up being okay, but we never worried about the care we needed or him being in good hands. At the end, our main doctor told us that she talked to the other doctors and some of them were there just in case there was an emergency, but they didn’t charge us for them being there. I found that to be very nice.
(Staff with a patient at Hospital CMQ Premier, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted March 21, 2017
Ron Morgan - Ron Morgan Properties
In Old Town, Puerto Vallarta, there are three new private hospitals within walking distance from my house. These hospitals are far superior to hospitals in the US. For comparison, I was recently in Cedars-Sinai in Beverly Hills about a year-and-a-half ago and it was more like low-income housing compared to the new hospitals in Puerto Vallarta. There has been a deterioration of the American medical system. Private hospitals in Puerto Vallarta have...
In Old Town, Puerto Vallarta, there are three new private hospitals within walking distance from my house. These hospitals are far superior to hospitals in the US. For comparison, I was recently in Cedars-Sinai in Beverly Hills about a year-and-a-half ago and it was more like low-income housing compared to the new hospitals in Puerto Vallarta. There has been a deterioration of the American medical system. Private hospitals in Puerto Vallarta have state-of-the-art equipment and a nearly equivalent ratio of doctors to nurses. You don't wait in the emergency room; you will be immediately seen by a doctor and nurse.
I broke my foot two years ago. I drove myself to the emergency room and I was out within an hour-and-a-half with a bill of US $160.
There are always scandalous reports by media of incidents such as plastic surgeons who accidentally kill patients and botch surgeries in Mexico. You would always hear things like that, but the doctors in Puerto Vallarta are very professional.
We have a wonderful Canadian cardiologist here in Puerto Vallarta named Leslie, who sits down first and talks to you to know how you're feeling and asks you why you're seeing her. Sometimes after a check-up, she may want you to come in at no charge and just have the nurse do a blood pressure test. This is unheard of in the US.
In contrast, in the US, doctors usually come into the room after you've been waiting for 30 minutes to an hour. In Puerto Vallarta, hospitals have instant, high quality service.
(Foot clinic at CMQ Hospital, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted May 14, 2017
Peter F Gordon, MD - Lake Medical Group
The medicine in Puerto Vallarta is excellent. It's different than in the United States. It's like taking a step back in time about 50 to 60 years ago when there wasn’t so much the involvement of insurance companies in telling doctors what to do and what not to do. That means that doctors are able to spend more time with patients. They can recommend different tests they see as appropriate and not be dependent on what the insurance company or attorney tells them to do.
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The medicine in Puerto Vallarta is excellent. It's different than in the United States. It's like taking a step back in time about 50 to 60 years ago when there wasn’t so much the involvement of insurance companies in telling doctors what to do and what not to do. That means that doctors are able to spend more time with patients. They can recommend different tests they see as appropriate and not be dependent on what the insurance company or attorney tells them to do.
I am a doctor here in Puerto Vallarta and typically spend 30 minutes with a patient for routine visits. My office visit cost is 500 pesos (about US $28), which is the going rate in Puerto Vallarta. Some specialists may charge 600 pesos or 700 pesos (about $34 to $40) for a half-hour to a one-hour visit. I know an ophthalmologist who spends a full hour doing a full examination and his fee is 600 pesos ($34).
I am a doctor here in Puerto Vallarta and typically spend 30 minutes with a patient for routine visits. My office visit cost is 500 pesos (about US $28), which is the going rate in Puerto Vallarta. Some specialists may charge 600 pesos or 700 pesos (about $34 to $40) for a half-hour to a one-hour visit. I know an ophthalmologist who spends a full hour doing a full examination and his fee is 600 pesos ($34).
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The training, background, and experiences of doctors in Puerto Vallarta are excellent. I've found wonderful colleagues here. This is one of the reasons why we could promote our program from Ajijic in Puerto Vallarta, because we have the resources.
The hospitals in Puerto Vallarta are a little bit different than hospitals in the United States such that there are no shared rooms. When you walk into a hospital in Puerto Vallarta, it is very pleasing architecturally, attractive, and very clean. It's not what you would expect for a hospital. In some ways, hospitals in Puerto Vallarta look like some beautiful piece of architecture.
The equipment in Puerto Vallarta hospitals is up-to-date. They have CAT scans and MRIs. Anything that you would expect from hospitals in the United States, they have in Puerto Vallarta hospitals.
One thing that's missing in Puerto Vallarta is nuclear medicine, but it's the only thing that we don't have. All the other specialties and services are available in Puerto Vallarta.
There are also specialties and services in Guadalajara and Tepic, which are only about three and four hours' drive away or a 20-minute plane ride. Tepic is much smaller than Guadalajara, but it's the capital of the state of Nayarit so it's their main medical resource. Guadalajara has an over-supply of hospitals and physicians.
One of the reasons I moved to Puerto Vallarta is that they were short on physicians. I came here 17 years ago.
Now, Puerto Vallarta has six private hospitals. The largest hospital has a 24-bed capacity. The other hospitals have a capacity of 16 to 18 beds. This is not something you would expect from hospitals in the States. Where I was before in the States, we had two hospitals. One had a thousand beds and the smaller one had 300 beds.
Things work differently in Puerto Vallarta hospitals. In the States, patients are kept in the hospital longer than they need to be. In Puerto Vallarta, patients tend to go in and out a lot faster. The care in Puerto Vallarta is very good so people get well faster.
I do house calls in Puerto Vallarta. We have home healthcare service with aides and nurses so we are able to take care of people in their homes. For things that are minor, people don't need to go to the hospital. There are people who are about to be discharged from the hospital who say, "I'm not ready to go home." In the States, these patients would need to go to a nursing home or a step-down unit. In Puerto Vallarta, patients could go home and we've got people to take care of them in their homes. Patients do feel better getting treated at home.
Posted October 6, 2017