Fast Lane is more deluxe motorway rest-stop this week as I’m confined to a bed in a tiny hospital in St Moritz and am writing this with an elaborate IV stuck into the back of my left hand, a tube jutting out of my left knee and some very fancy drugs swirling around my head. While I’ve been told I’ll be released soon, my world for the better part of the next two weeks will be a small stretch of road between the hospital and my apartment – more Walking Lane than anything else.

You might recall my column from a few weeks back when I took issue with some elements of Swiss hospitality – grumpy staff and a general feeling that the service sector is doing you the biggest favour by checking you into your hotel or taking your order. I also suggested that at least one part of the country would do well if it were annexed by Italy. Not surprisingly, it generated a lot of support from visitors who’d had similar experiences and also some angry responses from humourless residents in Zug and Lucerne who felt that the bad service and slipping standards were the fault of Ausländers. One reader from Zurich went so far as to suggest that some of these people “can even speak Swiss German quite well and can trick the non-native ear into thinking they’re Swiss”. This particular gentleman was quite convinced that the country’s future involved sending these people packing and was, perhaps, part of the hospitality committee who organised Roman Polanski’s welcome to the Zurich Film Festival earlier in the week.

At the time I suggested that regions such as the Engadine Valley needed to raise their game in the hospitality stakes. A few weeks on, however, as I gaze out across the rooftops of St Moritz from my hospital bed in the dazzling late September sun, I stand corrected – the Engadine is a very nice place to spend time in hospital.

I arrived in St Moritz on Monday afternoon, spent the evening at my flat and on Tuesday afternoon walked up the hill to the Klinik Gut for a consultation with the doctors, the charming hostess in charge of meal and dietary co-ordination and the nurses who’d be looking after me. I was shown into a gleaming white corner room, various tests were run, the region around my left knee was shaved (thank goodness swimming-trunk season is behind us) and I was told when I had to stop eating and drinking and what time I had to be in bed. “I will pick you up for surgery around 7.25am and take you down so we can start right at 7.30pm,” explained the nurse in charge. “So you need to be back in the hospital no later than 11.30pm.” No messing with her.

The Klinik Gut is, perhaps, the model for the future of healthcare in the community. Set in the middle of St Moritz Dorf, just behind the Schweizerhof Hotel and next to Badrutt’s Palace Hotel, its chopper pad is kept busy in the winter with the medevac helicopter whisking ski and snowboard casualties in for emergency care while the reception is packed with guests arriving from around the world for orthopaedic surgery. For locals, the hospital is at the centre of the action rather than hidden away in the fringes of the town, making it easy for visits and also putting all of the village’s services on its doorstep. For visitors who find one of their party trussed up due to a tumble, the clinic is close to all the big hotels. As I wander back home to do a few hours of work before my 11.30pm curfew, I think about the time my mother spends shuttling around Toronto visiting hospitals to see relatives with new hips. I wonder if smart cities should have more manageable clinics in the heart of neighbourhoods rather than 1,000-bed medical centres parked beside shopping malls. I can only imagine that those who are bed-bound fare better when they see familiar faces more frequently and feel they’re still connected with the community rather than being parked beside a strip mall with a view of Walmart.

When I check in at 11.27pm and make my way to the room, a cool breeze is drifting in through the open window, the bed is turned down and some flowers have been delivered. I attempt to sleep but the thought of the epidural makes me a bit nervous and I manage three hours at best before my 7.25am pick-up. Five levels down, I walk into a sparkling operating theatre, the necessary sedatives are injected and I believe I watched at least part of the knee surgery on a flat screen while drifting in and out of consciousness. Just over an hour later I am tucked up in bed again and the hostess is close at hand to take my dinner order (rare roast beef, potato salad and consommé) and I don’t remember much more of Wednesday.

I’m already up and walking, there’s physio at 9.30am and, because the chopper pad’s not so busy at this time of year, there are benches where I can sit and enjoy the sun. As healthcare is hotly debated on both sides of the Atlantic, St Moritz offers a lesson or two in modern, community-minded healthcare.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle
tyler.brule@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/brule