After persistent pains for several days in her stomach, she went to Batra Hospital on February 1, this year. The hospital made her to visit several times for various checkups and finally on April 14 asked her to come for surgery of kidney 'stone' on September 22. The irony is, in the same hospital surgeries of paid patients are conducted as per their convenience with no waiting list at all.
Sabana is a Below Poverty Line (BPL) card holder, she visited Batra Hospital in Tughlakabad Institutional Area in the hope of getting free treatment under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category. Call it sheer apathy of private hospitals or the unfortunate fate of poor patients who are left at the mercy of poorly managed and greedy private hospital owners.
“When pain becomes unbearable, I take medicines prescribed by the doctors of Batra Hospital. It becomes mild for sometime. I feel pain all the time and it gets unbearable whenever I change my body posture,” said Sabana, a mother of four. Sabana used to work as domestic help, but for the last ten days she has been bed-ridden. Her husband is a tailor in a make –shift shop in the area.
Narrating her woes, Sabana said: “Sometimes the pain so excruciating that I cannot work. I did not go to work for last 15 days for which my employers deducted half my salary.” She further said that the shrinking family income has made it difficult to make ends meet.
Sabana’s story is just the tip of the iceberg as Millennium Post traced some other EWS patients who have been kept hanging by Batra Hospital.
Lokesh (42) who is suffering from Gall Bladder and Kidney stones was asked on April 13 to come for surgery of ‘Gall Bladder’ on November 16. Lal Man (40) was asked on March 12 to come for Urology surgery on October 15.
“How can I wait so long for a surgery which required at the earliest? I went to Safdarjung Hospital and got operated in April,” said Pramod (21), a BA final year student of School of Open Learning, Delhi University residing in Govindpuri. Lokesh was suffering from hydrocele and was asked on March 31 to come for surgery on October 3.
“A EWS patient requiring hip replacement was referred by a government hospital but Batra Hospital refused to accept the case despite having vacant ICU beds arguing that they conduct only scheduled surgeries,” said a Liaison officer at Primus Super-specialty in Chanakyapuri.
On a visit to Batra Hospital, on June 14, there were three vacant ICU beds. “The hospital shows vacant EWS ICU beds on board but refuses EWS patients on one pretext or the other. In reality they use it for paid patients,” said a senior officer of Delhi government.
In its order in 2007 and again in the Apollo case in 2009, , Delhi High Court had asked Delhi government to appoint accountants to scrutinise the ‘account books’ of these hospitals. These hospitals are liable to pay Delhi government for using EWS beds but the government never appointed accountants nor constituted any committee to supervise the monitoring.
A visit to Max Super-specialty Saket (Devki Devi) and Max Smart Super revealed that the patients have to wait between four and six months for operation dates, while paid category patients are operated as per their convenience.
Hospitals like Fortis Escorts Heart Institute (35 patients waiting for surgery), Okhla, Primus Superspeciality, Chanakyapuri, Max Patpargunj, etc don’t even give ‘operation dates’ but keep the patient in waiting list. “We call them when beds are vacant,” said EWS nodal officer of Escort.
“Those poor patients have only two options – either wait at home or sell out their valuables and properties to bear the exorbitant medical costs. These private hospitals, by shooing away serious patients save huge money, as their treatment is costly,” said Ashok Agarwal, Member, EWS Monitoring Committee, Delhi Government. He further added that the patients admitted on ICU beds in these hospitals are generally patients of less ‘costly’ diseases like fever, diarrhoea, food poisoning, road accidents etc.