Healthcare Special: Modern medical vision at Jia Yue Eye Surgery Centre

When the door opens, customers enter a lounge and are led through a soft-colored corridor with light music wafting around their ears.

They are then shown to their seat, likely a cozy sofa near a window that overlooks clean streets where people stroll in twos and threes in the afternoon sunshine.

A cup of freshly brewed tea or coffee imported from Singapore or Switzerland soon arrives free of charge.

The ambience at the Jia Yue Eye Surgery Centre seems far from a medical institution. For most Chinese, hospitals and clinics smell of Lysol and are swarming with edgy patients scrambling to pay their bills and then waiting nervously for their turn to see harried doctors.

"We are patient-oriented," said Jia Yue's President Cheryl Baumann in a modern office at Gateway Plaza in Beijing's Chaoyang district.

"The office is actually a VIP room for customers who might have to hold a meeting when they are here to receive treatment."

Targeting the more affluent, Jia Yue primarily offers eye care services to white-collar workers and senior executives.

"We have Mac computers, iPads as well as tea and coffee for them and all are free," said the China-born German citizen who lives in Singapore. She was educated at Peking University and the University of Cologne in Germany.

The clinic also has a hair care room, probably the last thing most expect to find in a medical center. "It is our intention to introduce a world-class standard of clinical operation to China," said Baumann.

"Customers who receive surgical treatment are advised not to wash their hair for the first 48 hours after operations to prevent contaminants from getting in their eyes and causing infections," said Manager Vivian Yang.

"But if they want to get their hair washed, our professionally trained hair stylist will do it free of charge when they come for follow-up checkups the day after the operation."

The clinic, which specializes in surgical correction of short sightedness and implanting contact lenses, has invested heavily in world-class medical equipment, said Baumann.

It offers iLASIK surgery - which NASA recommends for its astronauts who are near sighted - and is the first and only clinic in Beijing to use the latest laser equipment to ensure higher precision, an iFS150 Hz femtosecond device.

A part of Singapore Medical Group, Jia Yue has received more than 600 patients, some 20 percent foreigners working or living in China, since its founding last June, said Baumann, who is also the co-founder and CEO of the publicly listed medical group.

"Foreigners have an aversion to waiting in crowded public hospitals. And more importantly, most of them have difficulty discussing their conditions with doctors there, who usually do not speak good English."

Half of the 17-member Jia Yue staff is bilingual, serving just 15 to 20 appointments a day to limit waiting and provide sufficient time for patients to communicate with surgeons.

Even the nurses are dressed differently from their white-clad cousins in most public or private hospitals in China. Sporting Zara-branded shoes and black suits when working outside the operating room, they hope to create an easy and calm atmosphere so customers will not feel that they are patients, said Baumann.

lifusheng@chinadaily.com.cn