Booming private medical hospitals
Looking at the other side of the coin
- Sangai Express Editorial :: August 13, 2013 -

Medical tourism.

This has been the mantra of Shija Hospitals and Research Institute for quite some years now.

Health destination.

Daring to dream and work towards it or a reflection of the ground reality where Manipur can indeed be the destination for those seeking medical aid not only from the neighbouring States in the North East region but also from Myanmar ?

The philosophy espoused by Shija Hospitals and Research Institute obviously seems to have caught on, with numerous private medical centres coming up in Imphal in the last couple of years.

A healthy sign.

A sign that Manipur has been able to produce highly qualified, super specialist doctors in many areas of specialisation.

To quite a large number of people, needing medical help, the choice is today no longer confined to Downtown Hospital at Guwahati, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Delhi, Christian Medical College at Vellore or Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences at Chandigarh.

Certainly a significant progress from the days when patients requiring complex surgical operations had to go to Dibrugarh.

Side by side, there has also been a qualitative change in the diagnostic centres that have come up in Manipur, with Babina Diagnostics Centre laying down the benchmark.

Health melas, health workshops, special discounts for certain periods, special discounts for those who come lower down in the economic ladder, engaging super specialists from outside the State and gradually the private health institutions certainly seem to be on the go, not remaining content with whatever they have achieved so far.

Competition is the fuel that keeps the fire of excellence burning and more players in the field will automatically mean giving a new definition to cutting edge competition.

A healthy sign, no doubt.

Flip the coin and however not everything is as rosy as it looks.

The presence of numerous private health institutions and diagnostic centres tells a tale of its own, which goes against what is universally accepted as professional ethics or more precisely the Hippocratic Oath.

It is not an uncommon practise for specialist doctors working in Government run hospitals to refer patients to private clinics where they also practise.

Damn the non-practising allowance.

It is also common for doctors and medical practitioners to direct patients to get the diagnostic tests done at the centre of their choice or where they practise.

In other words a double edged sword can be seen in the burgeoning private medical institutions, particularly in Imphal.

On the other hand it also says something very significant about the state of affairs in the Government run hospitals.

State of the art medical equipments lying defunct for want of maintenance in Government hospitals is not a new thing.

A test as routine as taking a CT scan invariably means a visit to one of the private diagnostic centres, without any questions raised on what has happened to the machinery that has been installed at the Government hospital.

Most discernible is also the attitudes of the medical practitioners, from the doctors to the nurses, when they attend to the patients at the private medical institutions and at Government run hospitals.

The same doctor, who could be politeness personified in a private hospital could turn out to be a snobbish, haughty and arrogant one inside a Government hospital.

Central to all this is of course money.

There are no free lunches and no professionals should be expected to work for free but there should be a demarcating line between treating a patient and laying the architectural design of a building.

Profits.

This is a common thread that runs through all enterprises, but there should be a difference between running an upmarket shopping mall and managing a private medical institutions.

The sweet and sour of the booming private medical institutions is there for one and all to see and taste.