Yanhee Hospital

Yanhee International Hospital was opened in 1984 as a small outpatient clinic by Dr. Supot Sumritvanitcha, M.D., N.D., who named the hospital after the Yanhee Power Plant located nearby.[9] The hospital is now more well-known than the power plant (which has also since changed its name), and the original Yanhee International Hospital has been expanded many times over to include its numerous services.[9]

On May 25, 2012, Yanhee International Hospital was awarded the Reader's Digest Gold Award for Asia's Most Trusted Brands. The Reader's Digest Trusted Brands Survey attempts to identify the top brands that consumers in Asia trust. Scoring for the survey is based on six core ideals: trustworthiness and credibility, quality, value, understanding of customer needs, innovation and social responsibility.[14]

Yanhee International Hospital is known for having particularly knowledgeable and skilled surgeons for sexual reassignment surgery, also known as a sex change operation.[15] One of Yanhee's most famous sex change patients is Beautiful Boxer star Parinya Charoenphol, known publicly as Nong Toom. Nong Toom gained fame and fortune in 1998 as a champion kickboxer at Lumphini Stadium, but in 1999 arrived at Yanhe Hospital to undergo a full sex change operation, changing her male body to the female she currently is today.[16]

The hospital was also featured in an episode of National Geographic Channel's Taboo Series, in which a patient sought sex change surgery at Yanhee.

Yanhee is also known for its famous "rollerblade girls," who zip through the hospital carrying patient documents and internal paperwork, wearing short skirts and rollerblades.[17]

Yanhee Hospital participates in Operation Bright Smile, a program that manages free surgery and care for children born with a cleft palate. Yanhee Hospital provides surgery for 100 children with cleft lip or palate each year, free of charge, and for the more than 14 years that Yanhee has participated in the program, the hospital has helped more than 1,115 children. Yanhee continues to run the program, which, according to the hospital “lets these children face tomorrow with a brighter smile.”[18]

In 2010, Yanhee Hospital gained popularity for accepting a charity patient who suffered from severe chemical burns on her face, which left her permanently disfigured. She had been denied re-construction surgery by several other hospitals before being accepted at Yanhee, where Dr. Sukit Wangthamran and Dr. Thawatchai Boonpattanapong performed 10 surgeries to alleviate the damage left from the accident. CEO of Yanhee, Dr. Supot Sumritvanitcha, reportedly believed the charity case to be a "good opportunity to let the people know that there is always hope for people who are at the brink of despair but continually reach out in search of a helping hand."[19]

The hospital also organizes blood drives every year, in order to address the consistent problem of blood shortage throughout healthcare institutions. These blood drives occur every three months and Yanhee has conducted more than 15 blood drives since beginning the program.