Paelon Memorial Clinic opens new ICU

PAELON Memorial Clinic, Lagos, has opened a new Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The opening was part of the clinic’s efforts to upgrade their medical facilities in order to serve patients better.

Addressing reporters, the Managing Director and founder of the Clinic, Dr. Ngozi Onyia, said she started the 100-bed hospital with the sum of N25 million but today a lot of success has been recorded in the clinic. She added the major challenge on running the clinic is having too many critical cases at hand, because patients often come late.

Onyia said: “Some patients after treatment cannot afford the payment. We often ask them to make their payments in series for over one year. I feel that is the major reason why many doctors do not want to run private clinic.

“A clear example is an old driver of mine. He was very ill and he cannot afford medical treatment. I offered him medical treatment and asked him to pay N20,000 in series for over one year until he clears the debt. Many of our patients here are friends to the clinic. We do our best to ensure those who cannot afford medical treatment get medical attention here. “Another challenge is lack of access to fund.

It has not been an easy thing to generate money for medical equipment. Medical facility is very important in running clinic like this because without high quality facility you cannot deliver. “We always tell our patients that National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has covered them as far as our hospital is concern.

Many of them do not know but we keep on educating them”. Onyia said resilience is the secret of her success, adding that reliance is very important in every endeavor. She continued: “I remember in 2010 when I opened the clinic, I do not have enough patients then, but I did not give up.

Every day I would come to office by 8am and go home by 8pm just to make sure that every thing is in order. “I worked in Nigeria Brewery Plc, for 10 years as a Medical adviser between 2000 and 2010 that is where I made some saving in order to start this clinic”.

Onyia informed Paelon Memorial Clinic offers a personalised general practitioners service of the highest quality with in-house paediatrics, internal Medicine and Obstetrics, gynecology specialist, and now intensive care service. She said: “We have in-house competence and capability for minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery and a rich network of visiting specialists in the following disciplines to support our clinic, which include cardiology, psychiatry, neurology, general surgery, ophthalmology, orthopaedic surgery, paediatric surgery, endocrinology, gastroenterology, ear, nose, throat, urology, oncology, radiology and physiotherapy.”

A consultant in the clinic, Dr. Sylvia Cole, also in partnership with the clinic, said with the new ICU the clinic would offer Nigerians the best healthcare services.

Cole said: “We have the capacity to invite specialists in other disciplines, as it may be required. We have a 24 hours laboratory that provides point of care lab tests in line with our value proposition, an in-house 24-hour pharmacy and an in-house radiology unit”. “To minimise error and in line with global best practice our medical records are electronic. We use a customised version of off-the-shelf software. Our data is backed up daily on site and remotely”.