Want to pay for heart surgery with Bitcoin? This hospital has you covered

Since the start of 2014, Bitcoin has made some major inroads into legitimacy. You can buy a hotel in Bitcoin. You can buy a computer with Bitcoin. Soon, you might be able to buy stocks that are Bitcoin (or, at least operate on a similar technology). Now, another milestone: a privately owned hospital in Warsaw, Poland is planning to support Bitcoin for all bills, and install a Bitcoin ATM in the lobby. Bitcoin support has been growing, in an ad-hoc sort of way among physicians and healthcare providers all over the world of course, but this will be the first hospital to accept Bitcoin on an institutional level, for all services rendered.

The hospital is run by the Medicover Group, a healthcare company that runs a number of hospitals across Europe. Founded in 1993, the company is one of the leading healthcare providers in Eastern Europe, running more than 30 hospitals in Poland alone. The Warsaw branch is their flagship hospital, and if the Bitcoin implementation goes well, support could spread to their other offices across the continent.

The company, according to Tucson Dunn, director of the hospital division, holds transparency of pricing in high regard, and that extends to its Bitcoin support. The hospital will list the prices of all services natively in Bitcoin, to make the process of payment more transparent.

“What makes Medicover Hospital special in the new realm of bitcoin healthcare is that the hospital has a published bitcoin price list for every type of care,” said Dunn.

This kind of story is exciting to report on, because it represents a major step towards the day when it’s possible for ordinary people around the world to get through their lives on Bitcoin alone. To read more, check out our colleagues at CoinDesk reporting on the subject.