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Need for regulator for corporate hospitals
Need for regulator for corporate hospitals. As such, no remedial action is taken except for token visits by the Minister concerned. Due to lack of confidence in the government hospitals, patients are forced to go to private hospitals where a different kind of torture takes place.
Corporate hospitals which have availed of all kinds of concessions from the government, including land and import duty exemption for medical equipment, are supposed to treat poor patients free of cost, but the norms are not adhered to. Bills of patients are often inflated
Government hospitals all over the country are in pathetic condition; the problems are multiple. Doctors do not attend the hospitals regularly, wards including ICUs are in a dirty condition; medical equipment does not work; medicines are not available; dogs freely move in the wards; and power supply is not regular. Though time and again this has been highlighted, people at the helm of affairs are aware of it. As such, no remedial action is taken except for token visits by the Minister concerned. Due to lack of confidence in the government hospitals, patients are forced to go to private hospitals where a different kind of torture takes place.
Patients are given slips daily, notifying the amount to be deposited. Patients are made to undergo tests which are not necessary. Test reports of other hospitals are not taken into consideration and the patient has to undergo the same tests. All corporate hospitals which have availed of all kinds of concessions from the government, including land and import duty exemption for medical equipment, are supposed to treat poor patients free of cost, but the norms are not adhered to. Bills of patients are often inflated. Few expert doctors in each discipline are appointed and all other medical doctors are freshers who are given low salaries.
Doctors who have studied in Russia, China and have failed in the qualifying examination in India are appointed on meager salaries. Homeopathic and Ayurvedic doctors are also appointed in corporate Hospitals. Except for a few senior nurses, a majority of nurses are students of the nursing college run by the respective hospitals. These students who are mostly from Kerala are paid stipends or Rs 800 to Rs 1,500 pm, and are forced to work for 12 to 15 hours. These nurses work in these hospitals for the sake of experience certificates which are useful for employment in the Gulf countries.
Whenever teams from regulatory agencies, accreditation council etc visit, these staff are forced to do double duty in order to manipulate the records to increase the ratio of staff vs. patients. The inspection teams are managed. Every corporate hospital has its own marketing team to lure doctors in rural areas and other hospitals with various percentages of the bill amount, for referring patients to their hospital. These doctors for the sake of commission send all kinds of patients to these corporate hospitals who force them to get admitted by scaring them.
They are made to undergo all kinds of tests and given inflated bills. The commission is disbursed to the referring doctors on monthly basis. There are several instances where brain dead patients are put on ventilator and charged and if the patient is not in a position to pay further, the kin of the patient is made to remove or switch off the ventilator as they refuse to do so on the principle of medical ethics. Every care is taken by these corporate hospitals to undertake several signatures from the attendants of the patients so that nobody goes to the court.
There is no proper forum which one can approach in case of medical negligence or injustice, except consumer disputes councils or fora which are headless most of the time. Even after a long wait for justice, judgements of these consumer disputes council are always challenged in higher courts, which take years for delivering justice. Different hospitals charge different rates for the same treatment and there is no regulation on this. Medical disposables are charged at double or triple their costs as compared to those available in a medical shop.
The inflated bills of the corporate hospitals are a major burden on the governments as most of the bills are reimbursed by them for their employees and for others through CM/PM relief fund, insurance etc. ArogyaSri patients are all put in a separate block where they are shabbily treated like second grade patients. It is time for the government to appoint a regulator i.e, a commission of honest doctors, which one can approach in case of medical negligence in order to regulate the corporate hospitals.
By Kanchiraju Kasinath
