Unhealthy Health Services by Nursing Homes & Private Hospitals. Image Courtesy – http://ebela.in.
One of the biggest medical scams held in Kolkata recently, which hammered the common people. Name of the Apollo Gleneagles Hospital in Kolkata has come into the forefront of the media news these days. Dr. Rupali Basu, the President and CEO of Apollo Gleneagles Hospital resigned from her post regarding the recent medical scam.
A young widow, Ruby Roy, lodged a complaint on 26th February, accusing the hospital for medical negligence and pressure for payments, which caused her husband Sanjoy Roy’s death on 24th February. The hospital allegedly charged more than Rs.7 lakhs for 8-day treatment and stay. When the family wanted to shift him to the government-run SSKM hospital, Apollo would not let him go till the full bill was paid.
On the 22nd February, Ms Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal, pulled up officials of the top private hospitals in Kolkata for fleecing patients and other malpractices. Apollo was the top of the list with higher charging on patients and malpractice in the name of treatment.
A specialist of the SSKM Hospital, Kolkata, where the post-mortem was conducted told, “The liver was seriously harmed and there was proof of a great deal of internal bleeding”.
The committee, containing five specialist doctors of ‘government medical colleges’ and a ‘special secretary’ of the health department, has been set up to see if Sanjoy Roy had been a ‘victim’ of ‘medical carelessness’ at Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals and whether the Apollo administration had postponed efforts by the family to move him to SSKM over an unpaid bill.
Sources said the board of trustees individuals, equipped with the post-mortem report, have been interrogating doctors, who were in charge of treatment, what steps they had taken to stop it.
Roy, an occupant of Dankuni in Hooghly, was basically harmed after the bicycle he was riding crashed into a Tata Ace on 16th February. He was admitted to Apollo and experienced the surgery to prevent seeping from his liver that day. On 18th February, he had been put on ventilator.
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So, this is the picture of a famous private hospital of Kolkata where the rate of suspicion about proper treatment of patient is very high. Not only with this particular hospital in Kolkata, this situation is happening in most of the private hospitals and nursing homes in Kolkata and other states of India also. Patients have become ‘customers’ and ‘treatment’ has become commodity. No ethics and principles are maintained to provide healthcare, and healthcare centres are focussing completely on the business.
Chief Minister of West Bengal has placed the bill on West Bengal Clinical Establishments (Registration, Regulation and Transparency) 2017 on Friday aiming to monitor the health care industry, treating it as ‘Seva’ or ‘Service’ – not just a business. Let us hope for the best!
