Balancing healthcare and survival: How should healthcare providers shape to maintain trust of patients

By Dr V P Singh
HoD – Laser, Laparoscopic and General Surgery ;
Dharmashila Narayana Hospital , Ashok Nagar Delhi

New Delhi (07/05/2023): Today the service provider In health care has become an industry. Since 1980, I have seen many ups and down’s in this sector . Today the issues of confusion over bill, scuffle in hospitals, altercation with doctors etc have become an everyday part of news cycle from some place or other. General public and press often raises questions over the credibility of doctors and hospitals. On the other hand medical practitioners claim that patient and attendents have become very aggressive and every small little thing escalates very quickly. I would like to go to the bottom of the problem.

To begin with, I want to point out that in 1980’s three things primarily were run by charitable organisations, namely:

Schools
Dharmshala
Hospitals

But after 1980, things started to change and swanky five star hospitals, schools and hotels replaced these earlier charitable organisations.

In 1983, first corporate hospital was opened by Apollo in Madras. After this became the glamorisation phase of this industry. Lot of business houses entered into the field of healthcare and it becomes a business industry, where like other businesses profit became the main aim.

I believe that both education and health are the basic necessities of life. Every individual strives to give his children best possible education and looks for best healthcare facility in case of any medical need. However, I don’t think that these things have to do anything with the five star facilities that people have become addicted to now. In my opinion, people should focus on getting best medical care and education, instead of focusing on swanky infrastructure.

If a businessman invests in providing good infrastructure for a hospital, he starts thinking of milking profit from day one. Qualified financial advisors are appointed for this purpose and they make strategies to maximise profit and in all this race, humanity takes a backseat.

Moreover, given hight cost of medical education often makes qualified doctors look for opportunities at corporate hospitals offering better packages. Their aim to serve the society conflicts with the material demands of life and hence a scenario develops where the internal conflict between service to manking and self-interest remain in perpetual debate.

Also, in today’s advertisement led world, it has become very difficult for patients too, to choose the right hospital for their ailment.

These are the reasons why even during Covid like pandemic, where many healthcare professionals lost lives in serving patients, government also found some hospitals who overcharged and made huge profits on the face of such adversity. While government is still doing enquiry on many hospitals, this decision has to be taken by the society whether hospital did their duty during Covid or not.

There are also news stories about hospitals overcharging for consumables and stents, which further lead to loss of trust in medical professionals.

To summarise it all, the government, society and the healthcare industry itself has to find a middle ground where even survival and sustainability of good hospitals and doctors can be achieved without overcharging the patients. Then only a win win situation for all can be attained.

About the Author: Dr VP Sing is currently working as a senior consultant and HOD in the department of Laser, Laparoscopic and General Survey at Dharamshila Narayana Superspeciality Hospital, Delhi. In his over five decades of experience, he has worked with many hospitals as Chief Administrator, COO and Medical Director also.