Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS), a premier super-specialty hospital made by a huge grant received from the Delhi government, is built on the land provided by the government. But it runs like most other fancy private hospitals where only concentration is on money-minting. Senior resident preparing case-history of new patients first required some costly instant tests prior to even preparing case-history. Most disgusting part is that senior resident was very rude, uncordial and not at all attentive even to the knowledgeable patient coming equipped with properly filed test-reports and prescriptions of last several decades. He rather threw away old case-files insisting on fresh tests at ILBS. If ILBS does not take test-reports from GB Pant Hospital (Delhi Government) trust-worthy, then enquiry becomes necessary regarding test-reports prepared by GB Pant Hospital. Even Director SK Sarin in his short interaction ticked many tests to be conducted at ILBS before starting any treatment, asking the patient to come after a week with ILBS test-reports.
Patients having taken prior appointments for the Director Dr. SK Sarin called through SMS mentioning appointments with him starting from 9 am, are called 60 minutes prior to the actual time of appointment for giving nurses and senior residents time to prepare case-history of new patients. But even the senior residents come much after at about 10 am. Director Dr. SK Sarin comes only around 12 noon, three hours after he is required to be present at the OPD. Instead of attending to long-waiting patients having taken appointments several days in advance, initial time-slots are given to influential persons personally known to the Director without even registration-files with them. It must be assured that patients with proper appointments must be attended by Director SK Sarin at the time notified to patients through SMS and appearing on ILBS display boards. Uselessly repeating SMSs at intervals for even a slight change of 15 minutes in appointment-time, and seeking feedback from the patients through mobile-calls are no more than a gimmick.
There are also reports that efforts were made for treating the premier institute as a Public-Private-Partnership model for revenue sharing by someone. It can further worsen the situation where doctors will be advising even more and costly tests. It is highly objectionable that some influential ones occupying senior posts at ILBS may get huge revenue-sharing from a government-institution built on very high costs of Delhi government. Updated information on detailed monthly remuneration received by the officers and staff including of Director must be put on ILBS website under section 4(1)(b)(x) of RTI Act. ILBS website is highly inadequate in respect of compliance with 17 parameters of section 4 (1)(b) of the RTI Act.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
