Healthcare in Maha Sarakham.

The province's main public hospital, in tambon Talat in the provincial town. On the sources we were able to check it is classified as a general hospital rather than at the regional tier that some larger provincial hospitals hold — Roi Et's, forty-odd kilometres east, is a regional one. What makes it more than a standard provincial hospital is its teaching role: it hosts a clinical medical education centre, a ศูนย์แพทยศาสตรศึกษาชั้นคลินิก, teaching clinical years four to six for the Faculty of Medicine at Mahasarakham University. A hospital that trains doctors on site runs a different standard of case review, specialty coverage and staffing than one that does not, and for a resident that is the most useful single thing to know about it. What we cannot tell you is how many beds it has: the figures we found were 472, 540 and 580, from different secondary directories that disagree with each other, and we could not resolve them against a primary source. So we publish none of them rather than picking the flattering one.

The teaching hospital of Mahasarakham University's Faculty of Medicine, and the reason this province has two hospitals with teaching roles in a single subdistrict. Its history is short and traceable: the university council created the Faculty of Medicine on 21 November 2003; a medical service centre opened at the Khamriang campus on 1 July 2004 and moved to the downtown campus in November 2005; the Medical Council of Thailand approved the MD programme in 2006 and the first cohort was admitted that year; and Suddhavej Hospital itself, named by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn on 16 November 2013, opened on 6 June 2014. The faculty also runs programmes in applied Thai traditional medicine, emergency healthcare and health science. We could not verify a total bed count for Suddhavej — one source described a 108-bed inpatient building and a 46-bed ward on one floor, which are partial figures rather than a total — so we do not publish one.

Below the two hospitals in the capital, the province runs the standard Thai structure: community hospitals in the district towns and subdistrict health-promoting hospitals covering primary care across 133 subdistricts and 1,804 villages. For most residents outside Mueang Maha Sarakham this is the tier that matters day to day, and it works well for routine care — vaccinations, chronic-condition management, minor injuries. Anything beyond that is a drive back to the capital, which from the southern districts of Na Dun, Yang Sisurat, Wapi Pathum and Phayakkhaphum Phisai means forty minutes to an hour. There is no rail alternative anywhere in the province and no air ambulance service we could verify, so every escalation is a road journey.

A private hospital appears in commercial directory listings for the province. BAANLYY could not verify its bed count, its accreditation or the range of specialties it carries, and we are not going to describe a facility we have not been able to check. Note the distinction we are making, because it matters: we are saying we could not verify one, not that the province lacks private provision. For deep private and tertiary care the realistic answer is Khon Kaen, about 62 kilometres northwest, which carries the region's largest concentration of both — and that trip is entirely by road.