Apr 26, 2011 10:25 AM
17004 Views
(Updated Apr 26, 2011 11:16 AM)
I recently had my mother admitted(March, 2011) for the second-time neurosurgery of a malignant brain tumor. Arguably being one of the deadliest diseases, the neurosurgical care for it requires a series of sophisticated and precise decision-making from the surgeon and the medical officers in charge, which I found was blatantly missing during our month long liaison with the hospital. I lost my mother in the end.
I have been observing and finding patterns of what typically goes wrong in this hospital. I think it is VERY important for others to know when considering this hospital for their loved ones:
1. Doctors in smooth-talk marketing - **The neurosurgeon we worked with(Dr. S. Das) outlined a baseless and unduly hopeful medical process in the beginning(before admittance) that he would like to undertake, without really mentioning the fine-prints. He mentioned about very modern technologies and medicines, which later on appeared to be either not possible to procure in India within a decent time, or are not appropriate because of specific adverse medical side-effects. Beware of this irresponsible sales pitch from doctors which can easily convince you to admit the patient into the hospital with a complete delusion.
2. Inexperienced doctors - **In at least three major occasions I found the neurosurgeon and other senior consultant doctors of the hospital to be completely inexperienced in terms of assessing the medical condition of the patient:
2.a. The first one is before the surgery - despite the presence of considerable brain edema visible from the MRI scans, the doctors either didn’t anticipate the serious postoperative complications or suppressed it in favor of not aborting the surgery plan.
2.b. In second occasion, one day after the surgery - the doctors mentioned to us that patient suffered a stroke and nothing much could be done. However it appeared that the patient was suffering from heightened intracranial pressure and showed slow improvements subsequently as the edema started to decline after the surgery
2.c. In third occasion(most lethal of all three) - the doctors were eager to release the patient from the hospital in a week or so and almost forced us to take the patient home even though she was far from being out of the critical condition. No guidance was provided in terms of what would be possible emergencies in near term and how to respond to those. We know from the sad experience now that a brain swelling or edema would develop easily under this condition and would be fatal to the patient because of the lack of critical medical care outside of a hospital.
3. Hidden corporate priorities - **This is my gut feeling(without any concrete proof) that many of the behaviors described above or experienced otherwise were actually influenced by the greedy corporate priorities that were mandated on the doctors and medical stuff to favor the financial profit of the hospital against the benefit of patients health. In general, one can observe the tendency of indiscriminately using sophisticated medical procedures(e.g. ventilation, tracheotomy etc.), expensive medicines or superfluous amount of pathological tests
I deliberately left out the topic of exorbitant cost, which is a magnitude higher than an average hospital in the city and yet without any discerning difference in the value of healthcare obtained out of it. When it comes to the treatment of someone beloved, perhaps cost is not always a deciding factor. I wanted to put forward an unbiased and objective view of my experience so that readers of this review can make informed decision while choosing a hospital in Kolkata.
