It is a known and bitter fact that private hospitals have become money-making industrial institutions through their negligent and inhuman attitude. There are reports that employed super-specialists are given daily targets of business for profiteering of hospitals when treatments are done irrespective of their actual needs. People going only for some tests etc., are unnecessarily alarmed for some serious disease to ensure admission to hospital even without any need.
Recent two cases of raising exorbitant bill of Rs 16 lakh by Fortis Hospital, Gurugram also charging disproportionately for consumables like gloves and syringes, and giving body of a live child wrapped as dead child by Max Hospital (Shalimar Bagh) are two such media-highlighted examples even though such examples are otherwise routines for private industrial institutions called hospitals. Public-memory is very short, and the guilty ones get escaped after some lapse of time. Law should be enacted that such erring hospitals may be taken over by governments to be run as premium hospitals. Such a system will make effective utilisation of huge money invested in these hospitals for public good. It will also serve as deterrent against wrong-doings by private hospitals.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
