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American Hospital of Paris (3)
About American Hospital of Paris
American
Hospital of Paris (AHP) was built by Americans for the American community
in Paris in 1904. It is not really located in Paris but in the suburb
of Nuilly-sur-Seine where there are a lot of gorgeous apartments for
wealthy Parisians.
AHP is known as an international hospital, where multi-lingual personnel
work for both French and foreign patients. AHP has acquired several
privileges in return for their contribution for the treatment of the
wounded during two world wars. One such privilege is the right to practice
medicine with one's own national medical license, which I mentioned
in the previous chapter. AHP is an ordinary private hospital in France
now, but it still emphasizes its roots, both American and French. Stars
& Stripes and Tricolor flags fly on the top of the Memorial Building,
the oldest building of AHP. During my stay in France, the American ambassador,
Pamela Harriman had a heart attack and died in AHP. Two national flags
were displayed at half-staff on her for a week at that time.
AHP emphasizes the amenities of a hospital and their target population
is the wealthy French people. As far as being an international hospital,
AHP also serves Russian nouveaux riches, wealthy, Northern Italians,
and people from oil-producing countries. The Emergency Room (ER) of
AHP with their French-English bilingual service, is well known to travelers
in African countries, because Paris is the nearest "civilized city"
(at least by air) from most African countries. Internationally it offers
multi-lingual and emergency medical service around the clock for 365
days per year.
All doctors working at AHP are self-employed including those working
in the ER. They care for private patients by renting the consultation
rooms.
Therefore, the only income for them is the consultation fee from their
patients. On the other hand, income for the hospital is from hospital
fees of the in-patients, fees for the laboratory tests of the out-patients,
and rental fees of the doctors' consultation rooms.
Since AHP is a non-profit organization, it depends totally on the contributions
from corporations in order to buy new medical equipment or building
new wards. Most of those contributions are from large American corporations
doing business in Europe. The way of thanking for the contribution is
remarkable. For example, the American First Lady, Barbara Bush, was
invited for the Inauguration Ceremony of the newly built facility in
1980's. In late 1980's (so called "bubble economy " era in Japan), quite
a few Japanese corporations made contributions to AHP, which enabled
AHP to build a new ward. Recruiting a Japanese physician was perhaps
in direct correlation to the gratitude on the part of AHP in view of
the contributions of the Japanese corporations.
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E-mail:kidot@momo.so-net.ne.jp