LIVING

In Barcelona, at least, the private health-care sector is robust. Indeed, almost a quarter of Spain’s 311 private clinics and hospitals are located in Catalunya, mostly in or around Barcelona. Even the king comes to the city’s CIMA clinic for his annual medical check-up. “Barcelona enjoys an excellent reputation for private healthcare,” said Jaume Tort, a doctor and director of the Barcelona Centre Mèdic (BCM), a network of private clinics in the city. “Not only the king, but lots of other people from around Spain and the rest of the world come to the city for medical treatment.”

Indeed, as an association that includes most of the city’s best private clinics, the BCM actively promotes the city’s health-care offering abroad. With the rise in health-care costs in the US, or long waiting lists for operations in the UK, more and more people are finding it both cheaper and quicker to be treated outside their own country. Some 3,000 foreigners use the BCM network yearly. “Low-cost airlines to Barcelona have certainly made coming here for treatment more accessible,” said Dr. Tort, adding that the most popular treatment for foreigners, by far, was for eye problems at the world-renowned Barraquer Centre of Ophthalmology.

Catalans who opt for private health care have, of course, also long made use of their own private clinics, and are well-aware of the prestige attached to these places. Mention to a local friend, for example, that you’re going to be operated on at the Institut Universitari Dexeus and they’ll most certainly approve and remark on what a classy place it is.

One reason for Barcelona’s strong private health-care reputation lies in the Catalan tradition of doctors creating and running private clinics themselves, according to Jaume Tort. He admitted, however, that this tradition, while responsible over the years for building the city’s reputation, has now all but ended. Indeed, all of the city’s major private clinics are now owned by companies or stockholders that have little direct, professional relationship with the clinics themselves. The director of one of these private clinics, who asked not to be named, acknowledged to Metropolitan that this trend towards company or stockholder ownership of clinics could be dangerous. He pointed to the USP Institut Universitari Dexeus which has just inaugurated a brand-new, €100 million hospital.