A Cut Above The Rest – Beverly Hills Medical Group
Coming into the facilities of the Beverly Hills Medical Group is much like making a house call on a friend who lives in a bright, spacious bungalow on a quiet street. It’s only a big deal because—as BHMG President and CEO Maria Rebujio and her staff of doctors and nurses promise—your visit will change your life.
The nondescript façade gives way to equally subdued interiors: tall, angled ceilings, generous rooms, and cool corridors accented by small abstract prints. Soft, warm lighting bathes the otherwise pale walls in an amber glow. Muted colors, clean lines and a preponderance of wood in the door frames, furniture and floors give the place the look of an art space instead of a medical facility that specializes in transformations of the body inside and out.
The atmosphere invites a deep, relaxed breath, whether one has come for popular dermatological treatments like permanent hair removal, laser skin tightening, and botox injections; surgical enhancements of the face and body like liposuction and rhinoplasty or more intimidating procedures such as reconstructive breast and post-cancer surgery; orthopedic surgery for bone problems and spinal injuries; pain management for cancer and chronic pain sufferers; general and vascular surgery such as removal of the gallbladder, thyroid, and skin cysts, and mastectomy. Other services include shock wave treatment for kidney stones, surgery on the sinus and tonsils, and tubal ligation, as well as others from an astonishing range of medical specializations.
However, utmost care was taken to free the facility from the constricted look of a standard medical setting, says Rebujio. None of the narrow, airtight halls, cold whiteness and glum fluorescence of hospitals here—even the bamboo-floored recovery area and operating rooms, though fully outfitted with standard and emergency medical equipment, are devoid of confused clutter.
Less is more, says Rebujio, especially for patients going under the knife. “We wanted the look of a home, to make them feel at ease and at the same time assure them that we are a professional medical facility.” The operating rooms, she points out, would earn the nod of any discerning health official and medical practitioner, for the cutting-edge technology that they employ as well as the strict adherence to US hospital standards. Oxygen and gas are piped in rather than wheeled into the room in tanks, eliminating potential cross-contamination—an innovation featured by only one other facility in the Philippines.
The word is out
Rebujio and her team are fiercely proud of their credentials. Whereas the competition would roll out an entire parade of celebrity endorsers, superstar doctors, and gigantic billboards, the BHMG prefers to summon the simple fact that they are one of only two facilities in the country licensed by the Department of Health as an Ambulatory Service Center, the capacity to accommodate a complete outpatient procedures—from consultation, surgery and recovery—raising them a notch higher than an average clinic.
The clients come via referrals or word-of-mouth; else they are visitors to the online site. “We have our fair share of celebrities and prominent people as clients, but we do not advertise them, nor are we much into an intense marketing scheme,” says Rebujio. The building’s low-key character eschews the glitz that the company’s name—echoed by another controversial clinic—suggests.
“Beverly Hills” here means respectability and professional healthcare, Rebujio stresses, as well as direct association to its parent facility in the American cosmetic surgery capital, the twelve year-old Beverly Hills Advanced Surgery Institute, which Rebujio developed to renown as one of the foremost multi-specialty surgery centers in the US. With husband George and an executive board, which includes doctors certified by the American Board of Surgery, American Board of Plastic Surgery and the Philippine Board of Surgery, Rebujio took her vision of expertise, safety and affordability back to the country of her birth, and in June 2007, opened in Makati what she considers Asia’s largest US-developed and managed healthcare facility.
The tagline assures quality and safety, Rebujio believes. “We are a facility that has met the strictest standards to provide the best healthcare for clients. Our center is as impressive as the finest in the States,” she says.
Currently preparing for ASC international certification from the Joint Commission International, a worldwide healthcare accreditation body, the BHMG in the Philippines differs only from the original US branch in terms of pricing. “Our prices here are not Beverly Hills prices. If they were, what would be the point of putting up a center here?” Rebujio asks. “Our prices are extremely competitive with those of the major Philippine hospitals.” A tummy tuck in the US costs roughly $8,000—the same procedure the BHMG offers for less than half. The strategy of adapting prices to the economy is drawing in foreign clients, for whom surgery, coupled with a tropical holiday in style, costs less overall than having the surgery alone in California or Europe, Rebujio reveals. The BHMG is licensed for medical tourism by the Department of Tourism.
Filipinos too are flocking by the dozens for body contouring and plastic surgery. Rebujio notes the Filipino premium on appearance, but also reveals the relatively high percentage of Filipinas suffering from breast cancer, a condition for which they offer reconstructive breast surgery and pain management.
Not the Hard Sell
Aside from its facilities, the BHMG swears by its doctors. Medical Director Dr. Jojo Arcilla leads a team of almost one hundred doctors—dermatologists, surgeons and aneasthesiologists—all board-certified, selected for remarkable training and experience, as well as excellent bedside manners and complete honesty.
“If you are not a candidate for surgery, our doctors will not lie to you. They will not endorse the patient for surgery if they don’t need it or if they don’t have a full health clearance,’ Rebujio says. “We are not the hard sell. If we think you will just waste your money, we will tell you.”
Everyone else in the building who is not a doctor or patient—with the exception of the webmaster, the accountant and the cook—is a nurse. The nursing staff attending the operating room is trained in advanced cardiac life support in emergency cases. A nurse by training herself, Rebujio is confident in having only registered nurses as administrative staff.
Indeed, a nurse that will serve you tea to soothe your nerves or get you an iPod to pass the time during light treatment is a rarity. “We don’t want salespersons—we want compassionate specialists,” she adds. A personal yet thoroughly professional touch may seem a contradiction, but like the blend of home and hospital on a shady stretch of Paseo de Roxas demonstrates, it may be so effortless that its seems altogether natural.
Francezca C. Kwe
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