User charges and government hospitals
letter sent to Indian Express on 24th June, ‘05:
"User charge is nothing compared to the huge sums we have to spend to bribe the hospital staff to ensure proper care for our loved ones. If it is a case of a surgery or even a delivery, the amount to be spent here on the staff is almost the same that would be spent in a private hospital". This quote by the government hospital patient's relative, who was asked by your reporter for his opinion on Mr Siddaramaiah (Dy Chief Minister)'s order of withdrawal of user charges, clearly sums up the actual position obtaining. Is it any surprise then that a visit to any of the Corporate hospitals in the city today will show you throngs of even lower middle class people patronising them. At least, they can be fairly sure that they will return home cured. As compared to that, in the case of the government hospitals, one needs to have a lot of luck to manage that given the callous attitudes, insanitary conditions, and the all pervading corruption.
In response to a survey conducted by a leading daily, a few months back, with a view to finding solutions to the wide-scale corruption plaguing government hospitals, a significant percentage of the respondents had suggested privatisation as a possible way out. Particularly in an area like healthcare, however, a check against unhealthy practices could perhaps be provided by strengthening the NGO/missionary institutions in the field, like St Johns, St Martha’s, St Philomena’s, Chinmaya, Ghousia, Rotary Trusts, etc, who all seem to be doing excellent work. The government would do well to hand-over the Victoria, Vanivilas, Bowring as well as all the ESI hospitals and dispensaries, to these institutions. May be a supervisory / regulatory authority could be simultaneously instituted to oversee all the related functions, while also scrapping the ministry.
Mr Siddaramaiah should realise that times have changed, and that his chances of re-election would be better served by more meaningful approaches.
Muralidhar Rao
"User charge is nothing compared to the huge sums we have to spend to bribe the hospital staff to ensure proper care for our loved ones. If it is a case of a surgery or even a delivery, the amount to be spent here on the staff is almost the same that would be spent in a private hospital". This quote by the government hospital patient's relative, who was asked by your reporter for his opinion on Mr Siddaramaiah (Dy Chief Minister)'s order of withdrawal of user charges, clearly sums up the actual position obtaining. Is it any surprise then that a visit to any of the Corporate hospitals in the city today will show you throngs of even lower middle class people patronising them. At least, they can be fairly sure that they will return home cured. As compared to that, in the case of the government hospitals, one needs to have a lot of luck to manage that given the callous attitudes, insanitary conditions, and the all pervading corruption.
In response to a survey conducted by a leading daily, a few months back, with a view to finding solutions to the wide-scale corruption plaguing government hospitals, a significant percentage of the respondents had suggested privatisation as a possible way out. Particularly in an area like healthcare, however, a check against unhealthy practices could perhaps be provided by strengthening the NGO/missionary institutions in the field, like St Johns, St Martha’s, St Philomena’s, Chinmaya, Ghousia, Rotary Trusts, etc, who all seem to be doing excellent work. The government would do well to hand-over the Victoria, Vanivilas, Bowring as well as all the ESI hospitals and dispensaries, to these institutions. May be a supervisory / regulatory authority could be simultaneously instituted to oversee all the related functions, while also scrapping the ministry.
Mr Siddaramaiah should realise that times have changed, and that his chances of re-election would be better served by more meaningful approaches.
Muralidhar Rao
posted by Muralidhar Rao at
12:15 AM
1 Comments:
Vydehi Hospital
Subject: - Harassing people (Kindly attention director Vydehi)
Dear Sir,
Building of the Vydehi hospital look great like American and European Hospitals but I think Vydehi Hospital are run by purely Indian mentality people and they are harassing lower Income people. Go and see a Chinese Govt. hospital. They are 100 times better than you.
Root canal therapy department of the Dental department are the worst.
Doctors and assistants in this department all the time say waiting list is too high. It will take too much time here so get done root canal therapy outside. We don’t want this advice from RCT doctors because
We people know that private dental clinic are everywhere in the city but we go to Vydehi from far off places because rates are low and we trust the Vydehi.
You people should know that educated and earning people from the software companies don’t go to Vydehi for dental treatment because they don’t have time to come four or five times in a week. If you want more money double the charges and increase the number of doctors on the RCT department but don’t harass innocent people from the lower income group. I will post this message on the blogpost.com
Regards,
Ranjeet Kumar,
Bangalore
info@vims.ac.in,
By
Ranjeet, at 9:02 AM
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