Thai Hospitals After a Crash and What It Costs

An ambulance called on 1669 will take you to the nearest hospital that can deal with your injuries, which in most of Thailand means a government hospital. If you are conscious and the injury is not immediately serious, you have a choice between the government system and a private hospital, and the difference is money, waiting time and how easily anyone will speak English to you. What decides how the bill is handled is not which hospital you are in — it is whether you have insurance that will guarantee payment, and whether the vehicle involved carried compulsory cover.

The most important practical point comes first: Thai hospitals, government and private, will treat an emergency. But a private hospital will normally want a deposit or a guarantee of payment before it admits a foreign patient for anything beyond that, and getting your insurer's assistance line on the phone early is what turns that from a crisis into a formality.

• Ambulance1669
• Compulsory cover, medical, before faultUp to ฿30,000 per person
• Compulsory cover, medical, once liability settledUp to ฿80,000 per person

Government or private

For a life-threatening injury, the ambulance crew decide, and the nearest capable hospital is the right answer regardless of anything on this page. For a broken wrist or a badly grazed leg, a private hospital in a city or a tourist area is usually the easier route for an insured visitor, mainly because of the documentation: an itemised bill in English is what a claim needs, and a government hospital may not produce one quickly.

What things cost

We are not going to publish a price list, and you should distrust any site that does. Thai medical prices vary by hospital, by city, by whether the hospital is government or private, and by how the treatment is coded, and a figure printed here would be quoted back at readers as a going rate long after it stopped being one.

What can be said with confidence is the shape of it. Routine treatment for a scooter graze at a government hospital is cheap by any Western standard — the sort of sum you would not think twice about. A night in a private hospital with imaging and a minor procedure is a real bill but a manageable one. A serious head or spinal injury with intensive care, surgery and a stay of days or weeks at a private hospital is the kind of number that ruins people, and it is exactly what travel insurance exists for. Ask for an estimate before treatment where you can, and ask for an itemised bill afterwards, always.

Where the money comes from

Compulsory motor insurance

The por ror bor policy attached to the vehicle involved pays preliminary medical expenses of up to ฿30,000 per person without waiting for fault to be established — roughly £690, US$870 or €750 — and up to ฿80,000 per person once liability is settled. Death or total permanent disability is ฿500,000, there is an inpatient allowance of ฿200 a day for up to 20 days, and the combined maximum per person is ฿504,000. Those figures come from licensed Thai insurers' own published summaries.

The preliminary payment is the useful part in practice, because it does not wait for anyone to establish blame. But understand what ฿80,000 buys in a private hospital: not very much, if the injury is serious. Compulsory cover is a floor. Por ror bor explained has the detail.

Your travel insurance

This is the layer that matters for a visitor, and it is also the one most likely to fail — not because insurers are difficult, but because motorbike cover is conditional. The UK government's advice is blunt: driving or riding without a valid licence "could invalidate your travel insurance and you'll be unable to claim if you have an accident or injury", and it lists mopeds and quad bikes among activities not usually covered as standard. One insurer's published motorcycle wording requires the rider to hold a home licence valid for that class of machine "regardless of the local laws", and extends the same condition to a pillion passenger's cover, which depends on the licence held by whoever is riding.

Read your own policy's motorcycle clause before you get on a bike. Does travel insurance cover driving in Thailand and what voids your motorbike cover go through what actually catches people.

You

Which is what is left if neither of the above responds.

Admission, deposits and your passport

A private hospital admitting a foreign patient will normally want either a guarantee of payment from an insurer or a deposit — commonly taken as a card pre-authorisation. This is ordinary commercial practice, not a shakedown, and it is why the assistance-line call matters so much. If you have no insurance, expect to be asked to pay as you go.

Hospitals will usually ask to hold your passport during admission. You are entitled to ask for it back and to offer a photocopy instead, and it is worth doing — you may need the original for a police matter, an insurer or a flight change.

Get checked even if you feel fine

Three things after a road accident are worth a hospital visit even when you have walked away from it:

• Any blow to the head, and particularly any period of unconsciousness, however brief, or any confusion, repeated questions, worsening headache or vomiting afterwards.
• Neck or back pain.
• Any wound that broke the skin. Tropical wound infection is fast and routine, and a graze that would scab over at home can become a serious problem here within a couple of days. Road rash and exhaust burns explains why.

Dog bites and scratches are a separate matter with a genuine time element — get medical advice the same day rather than waiting to see how it looks. Dogs on the road covers it.

If you need to be moved

Transfer between hospitals is common — a district hospital stabilises and sends you on to a provincial or private hospital with the right specialists. That is a normal part of Thai emergency care, not a sign of a problem. Flying home injured is a much larger undertaking and a much larger bill; medical evacuation and repatriation from Thailand covers when it is genuinely necessary and who arranges it.

Frequently asked questions