I'm curious to see your thoughts on this.
Do you feel that getting treatment from a private hospital in India today is very expensive?
If no, then that's it, but if yes, why do you think it is so expensive and what are your suggestions to make it not so?
getting a lot of good responses
keep it coming
i plan to use some of them and give my opinions on them
since Mastodon doesn't allow quote tooting I'll post screen shots of some of the replies and my reply to them
first up
100% true
private health care facilities are for profit enterprises and are thus businesses
no arguments from me here
the common complaint from pretty much everyone is that private healthcare is expensive
compared to what is a question I throw out to the rest of you to ponder and help answer
1. I don't personally know of different rates between insured and non insured patients but I have seen different rates for Indian citizens and foreign nationals for the same procedure. So what you say might very well be true.
2. Private labs have been known to offer doctors "commissions/cuts" to entice them to send their patients there for tests and imaging. Open secret. Shocking further is some hospitals do this too. Offer very low salary but "cuts" for each blood test x ray etc etc.
3. True about targets. Hospitals try to avoid paying high salaries by working out such schemes with doctors.
One hospital I had interviewed for offered me a low base salary but I could make upto "3 times that amount" per month if I ordered a bunch of tests & diagnostic imaging. I turned down that hospital & instead moved to the hospital I work in now.
At the end of the day, I can now say, whether I see 1 patient or 1000 patients my salary is fixed.
But whoever took the other hospital job 🤷♂️
yes our government needs to do so much more
A comparison between two "biggest" democracies is telling: the U.S.’s health expenditure is 18% of GDP, while India’s is still under 1.5%.
In Budget terms, of the U.S. Federal Budget of $4.4 trillion, spending on Medicare and Medicaid amount to $1.04 trillion, which is 23.5% of the Budget.
In India, allocation for healthcare is merely 2.2% of the Budget.
All 2017 data.
noticed many say "unwarranted investigations" as a reason for high cost
I think this can be looked at in two ways.
1 as I mentioned earlier those doctors who work on cuts
2 and honestly more common though, is that we live in a very litigious society. And in India we hear every day about a doctor getting beaten up. All this amounts to something known as "defensive medicine". Safer to do the test and get a negative result than not doing it and risk getting sued or worse for missing a diagnosis.
Doctors tend to favour certain brands of drugs most of the time for reasons not always nefarious.
I'm not denying there are a few here too who gets "cuts" again but majority of us don't. Some times we just prefer one brand over another for different valid reasons eg: quality control.
As per the notification of MCI Dated 21/04/2017 the doctor should prescribe drugs with generic names with the brand name in brackets.
Unfortunately as of now this is not mandatory. Only a guideline. 🤷♂️
I assume you mean "imported" but yes you are 100% correct.
Many of the imported equipment and drugs are highly taxed so adding to costs.
Indigenous production is present but not as widespread or as good quality yet to match the International standards.
Think of the automobile industry in the 1990s and today. Today cars are manufactured in India and are exported to various countries. Who could have even dreamed of this back then. We need the same for healthcare devices and drugs
well you got me here! 😜
dietician is an interesting question and i used to wonder this myself till I looked it up
All hospitals have to have a dietician planning the meals menus etc and this is required as per the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) guidelines.
I have attached a screen shot of their "Checklist of Hospital’s Food services (Kitchen) for NABH accreditation preparation" showing the relevant points regarding this.
the system indeed has a lot of flaws and only good communication hard work and honesty and transparency can solve this
i hope this little thread of mine helps with this even a tiny bit
health insurance premiums seem to be going higher and higher and no one seems to be doing anything about it
as for the "benami" bit, well this is India after all 😜
got some responses from the bird site too
will post my replies here
maybe when i get some free time i will repost all this there
I've turned off cross posting for this thread to avoid confusions
I've already talked about the tests earlier. As for the fees most hospitals don't even give that "consultation fee" to the doctor. Yup I know you find that hard to believe but it is true. Very few hospitals actually give that fee to docs and even still it will be a portion of that not the full amount
I feel sorry for the duty doctors
most hospitals hire fresh out of MBBS doctors as "duty doctors" in the wards ICUs because it is cheaper to hire them rather a specialist in Hospital Medicine or Hospitalist. Yes that is a real speciality. 😉
Most of these young doctors have no clue honestly what is the rational for the respective consultant prescribing drugs or procedures and I think it's not fair to hold that against them.
As for the bill discrepancies that is unfortunately quite common. 😔
someone once compared difference in different private hospitals to difference in different star hotels
you get what you pay for
crude comparison but apt in most cases really
morally questionable?
ICU rates are very high in private hospitals
in fact I have seen hospitals in my area RAISE their ICU rates multiple times over the last 5 years
there seems to be a lot of people complaining about wrong billing issues
any suggestions on how to rectify this?
I honestly believe that most doctors only order for tests/investigations to back up/prove their clinical diagnosis.
Ultimately modern medicine is now practiced as evidence based medicine. Evidence is these tests. The courts also insist we have evidence and these tests are accepted in courts too.
Eg: I might be good enough a doctor to touch your abdomen and say that you have an inflamed appendix, but would you let a surgeon operate on you before we confirm my diagnosis with an ultrasound scan?
many of us has this fear
my father was admitted for 4 days for angioplasty and his bill came to 5.2 lakhs and this was in Trivandrum
you make some excellent points
hard hitting but the truth
not too sure about that "greediness" comment though but agree with everything else
The Code of Medical Ethics Regulations, 2002
CHAPTER 3
3. DUTIES OF PHYSICIAN IN CONSULTATION
3.1 Unnecessary consultations should be avoided
Some times you have to wonder whether the consultation is warranted or not and stories such as this doesn't assuage such doubts at all
The ONLY explanation I can offer is surgeons are terrible at non surgical issues and so needs medicine doctors to handle those things. I previously worked with a surgeon who can't read an ECG. Yup true story. 🤦♂️
While I appreciate the sentiment I'm not sure if you are aware of what the MCI can and cannot do but I'm pretty sure they have no power in deciding how a private hospital can price its services
Only the government can do anything about this.
But will the government interfere with a private business is the question
so you want a complete government provided healthcare system? Like the British NHS?
Because no private hospital owner would keep their hospital open if something like this was attempted.
yup i have mentioned this before
most people are unaware that the high costs do not necessarily translate to high salaries for the doctors nurses and staff.
I think you zeroed in on an excellent point
COMMUNICATION
I've noticed this in some of my colleagues too.
Many times good communication can make a huge difference in treatment outcomes.
Medical education is only now focusing a little bit more on this issue and hopefully the doctors who graduate tomorrow will be far in tune with this concept.
Can any doctor answer me this. Who taught you how to tell a family that their loved one has died?
communication is key
wow this is becoming a rather long thread
will add more if I get any other interesting responses
Jonathan
