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A man has a heart attack at a restaurant in Seminyak. He collapses at the table in the middle of dinner. His family calls an ambulance. Bystanders start CPR, continuing for seventeen minutes before a defibrillator arrives. Far too long. The family dictates that he goes to Siloam, that's the hospital they know. The ER team stabilizes him, but there's no cardiothoracic surgeon on call there. He's transferred to Prof. Ngurah Rai Hospital. Emergency surgery is "scheduled" for 7am. By then, the heart damage is significant and largely irrecoverable.
Here's what changes if that family had a plan: they skip Siloam entirely and go straight to the hospital with the emergency cardiothoracic capability. It's not guaranteed, but surgery the same night is now possible. Significantly improving potential recovery outcomes.
Bali has competent hospitals and skilled specialists. The challenge is that the system isn't organized the way most expats expect. There's no centralized emergency number that routes you to the right facility. There's no guarantee the nearest hospital has the specialist you need on call tonight. And when someone you love is in crisis, you are not in a position to be researching this on your phone.
The decisions that matter most in a medical emergency are the ones you make in the first sixty minutes — and almost all of them are logistics: Where do we go? Who do we call? What do we tell them when we get there?
A Day 0 Emergency Plan is a household-specific document that answers those questions before you need to ask them. It maps your family's situation — where you live, who's in the household, any pre-existing conditions — to the facilities, specialists, and routes that are relevant to you specifically.
It's not a medical guide. It's a decision-shortcut for the worst night of your year: which hospital for which emergency, how to get there, who to call on the way, and what to say when you arrive. The kind of thing you stick on the fridge or save in a shared family note — and hope you never need.
The Padma Care Day 0 Plan has a QR code right on it that opens to a map with all the hospital ERs we recommend already plugged in, just hit "directions" from where you are, and you know where to go (whether by Grab or by ambulance). It also has 'out-of-the-way' hospitals, because like the family friend referenced in the story, emergencies don't only happen when you are at home.
Different hospitals in Bali have different strengths. A facility that's excellent for orthopedic trauma may not have interventional cardiology. The hospital ten minutes further away might be the one that saves your life — but only if you know that before the ambulance arrives.
This is local knowledge that takes years to build, and it changes as hospitals expand, specialists rotate, and new facilities open. Most expat families don't have it, and there's no reason they should — it's not their job.
It's ours.
We build personalized Day 0 plans for every Padma Care member household. Each plan reflects the family's specific location, medical history, and the current landscape of specialist availability across Bali's hospitals.
It's one of several resources we're rolling out this year as part of what we think concierge healthcare membership should actually look like — not just access to a doctor, but a layer of preparation and coordination that sits underneath your family's health, ready when you need it.
If you'd like to learn more about Padma Care membership, visit padmacare.pbmcgroup.com or reach out to us directly.
