Pick your hospital before the emergency

The short answer

Choose two hospitals now: one nearest you for anything acute, and one you would travel further for if it were serious. Call both this week, ask the questions below, and write the answers on a sheet somebody else in the house can find.

The questions to ask on the phone

1. Is there a doctor physically on site 24 hours, or a nurse with a doctor on call? Both models exist and both are legitimate. The difference is how long it takes for a decision to be made at 3am, and you want to know which you are choosing before you need it.
2. Do you have an intensive care unit, and how many beds? Follow up with: if it is full, where do you transfer patients? A hospital with a standing arrangement has thought about the worst day.
3. Do you have a blood bank on site, or do you source blood? For anything involving trauma, surgery or childbirth this is among the most important questions you can ask, and the answer varies enormously between facilities that look similar from the road.
4. Do you have oxygen available at all times? Ask plainly.
5. Which HMOs do you accept, and are you currently accepting them? The second half matters. Facilities regularly suspend acceptance of specific schemes over payment disputes, and the time to discover that is not on arrival.
6. What is the deposit position for an emergency admission? Ask directly what is required before treatment begins and what payment methods work at night. This is the practical difference between arriving prepared and arriving arguing.
7. Do you have an ambulance, and what is the realistic response time to my area? Then plan on the assumption that you will be driving. Ambulance coverage across most Nigerian cities is thin, and a plan that depends on one is a plan with a gap in it.

Verify the people and the building

• Doctors are registered with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. For any planned procedure, ask for the name of the consultant who will actually perform it, not the name of the hospital.
• Ask who is on duty at the weekend. Many facilities run a full consultant roster on weekdays and something much lighter from Friday evening. Plenty of emergencies do not respect that schedule.
• Ask how many of a specific procedure they do a year if you are choosing for something planned. Volume is a reasonable proxy for competence and a fair question that good units are used to.

The sheet to keep on the fridge

Written down, on paper, where anyone in the house can find it while panicking:

• Both hospitals, with the exact route and how long it takes at night.
• Their phone numbers, tested.
• Each family member's blood group and known allergies.
• Current medications, with doses.
• HMO scheme name and membership number.
• Two people to call, with numbers not stored only in one phone.

The reason to write it rather than keep it in your phone is that the person who needs it is often the one whose phone is locked.

Reading hospital reviews

Hospital reviews skew hard: people write after a bad experience or a remarkable one, rarely after a competent ordinary one. Read them for the operational details rather than the clinical verdict, which a reviewer is usually not equipped to give. Waiting times, whether staff explained things, billing surprises, whether the place was clean, whether calls were answered. Those are real and consistent, and they are what our general review-reading guide is built for.

Do not choose a hospital for a serious condition on star ratings. The average is thin almost everywhere, and this is the category where that matters most.

Bottom line

Two hospitals, chosen this week, called this week, written on paper. Twenty minutes now buys you the one thing nobody can buy in the moment, which is knowing where to drive.