Founder values must be translated into systems: His grandfather's attention to every patient had to become a measurable standard the rest of the hospital could follow.
What clinics can't afford, Wattanapat built: Small clinics can't afford the specialists or the equipment for serious cases. Wattanapat built that capability instead, adding specialists like neurosurgeons and cardiologists.
Local healthcare providers can be partners rather than competitors: Community clinics handle the basic cases and send Wattanapat the ones that need emergency, inpatient, or specialist care. It's not competition; help flows both ways.
Growth requires selective investment: The hospital doesn't try to offer every procedure; it invests where there's real patient need and refers rare cases elsewhere. Even the offices are bare; every baht goes to equipment instead.
People are the real growth constraint: Keeping the right people is what limits growth. On Samui, specialists come from elsewhere and tend to leave. On the mainland, the problem is finding department heads who are managers, not just clinicians.
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LEADER DNA
Chane Laosonthorn had not planned to work in healthcare. He studied management, marketing and accounting in Australia before building experience in finance and human resources. Chane was preparing to accept a promotion in Perth when his grandmother told him that the family hospital was struggling. His grandfather, the hospital's founder, had suffered a health setback, and the family faced a choice between selling, running, or diversifying the business
Chane chose to return to Thailand with no clinical background and limited knowledge of hospital operations. The decision was personal before it was strategic: protecting his grandfather's legacy and testing himself against a genuinely hard problem.
Chane's outsider perspective became an advantage. Rather than approaching the hospital solely as a medical institution, Chane examined its systems, people, finances, and organizational structure. He preserved the founder's commitment to patient satisfaction and quality care while replacing dependence on individual personalities with measurable standards, specialist capacity, and professional management.
His leadership philosophy is to calculate the risks carefully, decide whether the opportunity is worth pursuing, and, once the decision is made, commit to delivering it.
What Chane shared
Founder values must be translated into systems
Values cannot depend entirely on the personality of a founder. Wattanapat translated Dr Wittaya's attention to patients into operating procedures, performance indicators and measurable service standards.
Clinical depth creates a stronger business model
The hospital expanded its specialist and sub-specialist capabilities while investing in biomedical equipment that smaller clinics could not economically provide. This allowed Wattanapat to handle more complex cases and build a strong referral network.
Local healthcare providers can be partners rather than competitors
Community clinics treat basic conditions and refer patients who need emergency, inpatient, or specialist care. Wattanapat supports these clinics instead of trying to replace them, creating a healthcare network that benefits every provider.
Growth requires selective investment
The hospital does not attempt to offer every possible procedure. It invests where there is sufficient patient volume, clinical need, and revenue potential, while referring rare or highly specialized cases to appropriate partners. Also, by design, the management offices at WPH are plain. Every baht saved on non-essentials goes toward biomedical equipment and specialist capacity, the things that actually differentiate patient care.
People, not capital, are the real growth constraint.
Capital and market demand are important, but hospitals cannot grow safely without qualified clinicians, department heads and managers. With hospital financing secured through its stock listing, WPH's bottleneck is finding and retaining the right department heads and specialists, particularly on islands like Samui where staff often relocate away eventually.
Welcome to Business DNA, a chance for us to delve into the essential make-up of business leaders and their organizations. Our focus is not on the short term but instead on understanding the driving forces behind business. Our guest today is Chane Laosonthorn, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Director of Wattanapat Hospital.
Take a moment to introduce yourself, your background, and your story.
Chane: I am currently Deputy CEO and CFO of Wattanapat Hospital. I have worked with the organization for about 11 years. Before returning to Thailand, I studied and worked in Perth, Australia. I did my bachelor's and master's there, then worked for about six years. I studied management and marketing, then a master's in accounting, honestly more out of practicality than passion. I looked at what credentials Australia wanted at the time, which was accounting, and that's what I pursued. I started as an accountant, and when a payroll officer left with no notice, I stepped in and got it right the first time. That opened the door to HR, and eventually another company recruited me into a more senior HR role.
Why did you leave Perth to come back to Thailand?
Chane: I had no intention of ever leaving Perth. One day, my manager came into my office and told me she had very good news. I knew she was about to offer me a promotion. Before she could continue, I went to the bathroom and called my grandmother. She had been telling me that the hospital in Trang was experiencing serious problems and that I needed to return. I asked whether the situation was genuinely that serious. When she confirmed that it was, I returned to my manager and declined the promotion. The decision happened very quickly. I knew nothing about the hospital business, and I had never studied medicine. My grandfather and I were very close. He got sick and could no longer be the doctor he once was, and I wanted to come back and protect his reputation. It was also, I think, a rare kind of opportunity to take something from bad to good. Not many people get that chance.
Tell us about your grandfather and how the hospital started.
Chane: My grandparents founded the hospital. My grandfather was a brilliant student who got top marks in the country in math, science, and physics. He went to study in Bangkok before returning to his home province to start a small clinic, just two rooms. He became so well known that an intersection in Trang is named after him, Dr. Wittaya Intersection. At his peak, around 1,700 patients wanted to see him personally, which obviously wasn't possible, so he referred people to other specialists. That referral instinct became the foundation of how the business runs today.
What shaped his philosophy, and how did it carry through as the business grew?
Chane: Two stories stand out to me because at the time they made no financial sense. He would travel abroad and rack up 300 to 500 baht in phone calls just to check on patients, for a doctor's fee of only 50 to 100 baht. From a financial perspective, the calls made no sense. From his perspective, caring for the patient was more important. And once, he sold a large piece of land, worth hundreds of millions today, to buy the province's first ultrasound machine. The machine was so outdated by the time I returned that its screen was smaller than an iPhone's. I asked him if it was worth it. He said absolutely, because before that machine, Trang had no access to ultrasound at all, and people were dying without it. That's when I understood his DNA. As he aged and the systems around him weakened, we had to translate that same instinct (intense, individual attention to every patient) into strategy, KPIs, and measurable results the whole organization could deliver, not just one person. That is how a founder's philosophy becomes scalable. Patients should receive attention from the moment they enter the hospital.
How does a private hospital generate revenue?
Chane: A hospital's main revenue begins with outpatients. An outpatient visits the hospital, receives a consultation, undergoes diagnostic tests, and may be given medication to take at home. Patients with more serious conditions may be admitted to an inpatient ward. The most serious cases may require intensive care or surgery. Healthcare differs from many service businesses because the customer does not decide the level of service. In a hotel, a guest chooses whether to book a standard room or a villa. In a hospital, the doctor determines whether the patient requires outpatient care, admission, intensive care, or an operation. Referrals are another important revenue source. Approximately 30 percent of our revenue comes from referred patients. These patients may initially visit a primary or secondary care provider that cannot manage the complexity of their condition. They are then transferred to Wattanapat for a higher level of care.
How do you manage a
