Apr 04, 2013 01:05 AM
11125 Views
(Updated Apr 04, 2013 01:02 AM)
I had my father admitted for liver abscess in 2010 at Manipal Hospital, old airport road, Bangalore. My father initially had high fever and heavy head and pain near the stomach (liver region), so the doctor told us that he has to be admitted. He also told us that it would take around 5-6 days for full treatment.
Since I had my company medical insurance cover of 5 Lakhs, I didn't think much and got him admitted. For the initial 4-5 days, the doctors kept prescribing only antibiotics for my father and no tests were taken. But my father was still struggling with high fever and the doctors didn't respond properly when we asked what the problem was. I made a mistake of telling that doctor that I had 5 Lakh insurance cover.
They seemed to indicate to me that like, "you have insurance of 5 Lakhs right, what is your problem?". The same kind of situation lasted for another 3-4 days and we were really restless with them. Our main issue was that my dad showed no signs of improvement and there seemed to be no proper "root-cause" diagnosis. They didn't even investigate properly on the stomach pain that my dad was telling them.
I couldn't meet the doctor because I had to go to office and the visiting hours was between 4-6 PM only during which the doctor who was treating my dad wasn't there. They are pretty strict about even family members visiting during non-visiting hours. My mom who stayed with my dad didn't know much even though she kept asking doctors what was the problem.
They always had the same answer - "we are investigating and will find the problem soon". Then one fine day, I escaped through the visitor entry, and then went and pleaded to the doctors (We were not in any mentality to shout at them because we were really worried of our father's health). After that, the doctors started doing blood tests, CT scans from head to toe, X-Rays and various other totally unnecessary tests.
Then on the 11th day, they found that my father had an abscess in the liver and that the abscess had been growing in size (The doctor at Vijaya hospitals Chennai later told me that the abscess grew greatly because of the anti-biotics that doctors at Manipal had given).
They told me they had to perform a procedure similar to laproscopy to put a needle through the abdomen into the liver and remove the puss or otherwise it would blast very soon. We had to agree for that too, even though it was because of their negligence. Then, the procedure was done and my father was made to stay with the needle for another 5 days for the puss from the abscess to drain out.
My father faced severe breathing problems and pain during this time and we were really worried about when they would send him home at all. Then once the abscess had reduced well, they told me that he could be discharged the next day. But, it took another 2-3 days to finally get the discharge letter and bring my dad home. Overall, my dad was admitted for over 20 days and the final bill was more than 1.7 Lakhs and thanks to my company's excellent health insurance cover, I was saved.
Even after discharge, my dad wasn't that comfortable. He was really feeble, was struggling to breathe and couldn't sit or stand properly just after walking 1-2 steps. We were really afraid of the treatment at Manipal and so, we took him to Vijaya hospital Chennai where the doctors reassured us that he was safe even though the needle procedure through the abdomen was unnecessary.
The doctor at Vijaya hospitals told us that he could have found the problem easily through a simple Ultra sound test because my father had been complaining about pain near the liver.
So, my learning from all this is that don't go to Manipal hospital and say that you have huge insurance cover. They really try to suck every penny out of your cover. And, they delay the treatment and take unnecessary tests. In my dad's case, they took 10 CT scans near the stomach region itself. When I questioned if it was safe, they told me they had no other option.
