MiD DAY finds pvt facilities minting money as Sassoon and YCM hospitals keep referring patients to them

Fromu00a0cleanliness to shortage of drugs and lack of beds to faulty equipment, often there is much that ails public hospitals. MiD DAY has given you a detailed health report of public hospitals and what ails them in this series.
In the third and final instalment of the series, MiD DAY takes a look at how much money private labs and hospitals get out of referrals from two of the biggest public hospitals, Sassoon General Hospital in the city and YCM Hospital in Pimpri, because of faulty equipment and drug shortages.

Patient's name: YCM Hospital
Diagnosis: Extremely fond of private chemists
Status: Under observation

Description of check-up
The good news here is that all diagnostic tests, including CT scans, are performed at the hospital. But unlike Sassoon General Hospital, which is a tertiary care super-speciality hospital, YCM Hospital can treat only a certain number of diseases. For the rest, patients are referred to private hospitals.

Specialised treatment
Many specialities like neurosurgery, vascular surgery, urology, among others, either lack doctors altogether or have consultants who visit not too often, and patients are directed to private hospitals.

Asked to spend on drugs
The scenario here is more or less similar to Sassoon when it comes to medicines for admitted patients or surgeries ufffd doctors ask relatives to purchase drugs.

Shabnam Sayed, whose mother-in-law Jaedaa was admitted a week ago after she suffered a paralytic attack, has spent more than Rs 32,000 so far on medication.

"Had I gone to a private hospital the cost would have been only slightly higher. I am shocked at the money we've had to spend on drugs. But I am not alone. From injections to blood and drugs, everyone is buying it privately," she said.

More patients than space
Overcrowding is another problem.
"Often it happens that there are more patients than we can accommodate. At such times, we do basic treatment and if the patient is stable, we ask him or her to move to private hospitals or Sassoon," said a doctor at the casualty ward.

Patient's name: Sassoon General Hospital
Diagnosis: Illness of referring people to private labs
Status: Critical
Description of check-up
As relatives of Rajesh Potra, a resident of Sholapur Bazaar, rushed him to the emergency unit of Sassoon, little did they know that they would have to shift him out within minutes.

Kaput CT scan machine
Potra, who sustained severe head injuries after a wall collapsed on him, was shifted to the Ruby Hall Clinic immediately from Sassoon. The doctors needed a CT scan to ascertain the extent of injuries, but the machine at Sassoon hospital was out of order.

While this incident happened in July, not much has changed even now. The machine continues to be out of order and patients needing scans are still being referred to private hospitals.

According to conservative estimates, 40 CT scans need to be conducted daily at Sassoon for emergencies like head injuries, road accident and others cases.

Money matters
Which means about 3,600 patients have been referred to private city laboratories over the past three months. On an average, a CT scan costs Rs 2,000 in a private laboratory. Had the Sassoon machine been working, the same scan would have cost a patient Rs 400 to Rs 500. That means merely because of a faulty CT scan machine, Sassoon has so far given close to Rs 75 lakh worth of business to private labs.

"The machine has become old and needs to be replaced. We have requested senior authorities, who have to make extra budgetary provisions to get a machine," said a senior doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Dr Gopal Khadse, head of the Radiology Department at Sassoon, said that a request for a new machine costing Rs 5.5 crore had been made.

Buy your own drugs
But CT scans are not the only way in which private players are earning from Sassoon hospital. Patients complain that while people are admitted to the hospital at a nominal cost, the cost of surgery is not much different from a smaller private hospital as they are made to buy a lot of drugs and even some basic tools for the surgery. MiD DAY met several such patients who had spent between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 merely on drugs and other material required for surgery.

"Yes it's true that patients are buying drugs from outside. It's because we only stock basic drugs. Besides that, we've to sometimes ask patients to make arrangements for blood, some disposable tools, et cetera," said a doctor, requesting anonymity.

No cancer treatment
Another issue that has cropped up is that the hospital has stopped treating cancer patients and refers them to other hospitals instead.

The reason: the hospital had a panel of six oncologists but the panel was dissolved and now there is simply no one to treat these cancer cases.

While state authorities say that a cancer speciality department is to be set up at Sassoon, till that happens patients will have to shell out thousands of rupees for private healthcare.