People queue up at 3 a.m. outside the Medical University Hospital in HCMC to be able to take the small numbers for a check-up.

Most patients coming for a check-up at hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City have to arrive at night and wait until noon the next day unless they are willing to pay middlemen for timely or expedited access.

More than a hundred people typically wait outside the diagnostic center Medic in the city from 2:30 a.m. onwards to take numbers for an examination.

A similar number can be seen outside the Medical University Hospital at around the same time for the same purpose.

The patients, many of whom arrive in groups of 10 or 20 from the south-central provinces of Ninh Thuan, Phu Yen and Binh Dinh or the Mekong Delta’s Kien Giang, Bac Lieu and Ca Mau provinces, queue up and wait until the hospital opens at 4 or 5 a.m.

Then there is a rush to break in, a lot of jostling as they try to get their numbers, and some fighting over a place to take a nap before their turn comes.

At the Heart Institute, people line up for several hours outside, then an hour inside to be given their numbers and wait yet another hour to be examined.

More often than not, the early birds are still left holding tokens numbered between 40 and 80 or thereabouts because the earlier numbers have already been collected by the middlemen.

Yen from the Mekong Delta province of An Giang arrived at the city Medical University Hospital at 2 a.m. and managed to occupy one of the first spots in the line outside the gate and move in quickly.

“I got 40. That’s lucky.”

Another woman from the delta’s Soc Trang Province said she had been warned by a neighbor back home to arrive as early as possible.

“I left home yesterday and waited here from the early hours but only got number 83.”

Regular patient Mai Thanh Tra from Ben Tre Province of the delta said, “If you want an early check-up, you have to arrive at midnight.”

Tra usually arrives at the hospital early in the morning and receives the check-up in the afternoon.

A patient more than 70 years old from Long An Province that neighbors HCMC was not strong enough to join the race for numbers and had to accept the final position.

“It is miserably hard to get a checkup.”

A short-cut

All these difficulties and inconveniences can be avoided if people know how to find the middlemen who have arrived early enough to obtain the small numbers or who know hospital officials well enough to get them an early check-up.

Several middlemen frequent the Medical University Hospital as the place is usually crowded.

If a patient pays VND250,000 (US$14), a general check-up with all the necessary procedures will be done in three hours without having to take a number.

A quick ultrasound scan will cost an extra VND100,000 ($5.62).

Frequent customers only need to call the middlemen from home. When they arrive at the hospital, they will be led straight to the check-up room, breaking the queue, and receive the result with the prescription in less than one hour.

More than ten middlemen wander around the hospital every day and each of them helps around ten people set seen quickly.

Sometimes patients waiting in the queue shout at the hospital officials after waiting for a long time and not hearing their number called.

Yet the middlemen are not the only ones to blame for causing such long waiting times.

They work hard, leading the patients from room to room and negotiating with the doctors to get the work done. They get paid by the patients but “we cannot pocket all that money,” said a middleman at the Medical University Hospital.

Part of the money has to be given to the doctors who help with the “express” check-up.

A middleman at HCMC Tumor Hospital told his customer who was bargaining last Wednesday: “I only earn several dozen thousand dong and the rest is shared with the hospital officials.”

“That’s the rule,” agreed another middleman at the hospital.

The middlemen refused to introduce themselves to the customers.

When asked for names, they would say: “Just come here and you will see me.”

At the Dermatology Hospital on Nguyen Thong Street, middlemen persuade patients to buy medicine at private clinics nearby by saying things like “The hospital is not examining today” or “The hospital is now crowded and it’s quicker if you go somewhere else.”

The middlemen here are overzealous in exhorting patients to accept their services. If a passer-by were to slow down in front of the hospital, she or he will quickly be pulled to the pavement and the special services offered somewhat aggressively.

Reported by Thanh Nien staff