We had a medical emergency recently and had to take someone to the hospital at 2 in the morning. First, we had to think about where to take the patient. The closest hospital was for ‘uniformed’ people and we were told that they wouldn’t give a civilian the proper care. Then we took a few seconds to give some thoughts to government hospitals, which were quickly dismissed because of the time and the state of emergency medicine in them.
We decided to go to a private hospital that was nearest to our residence. This is where the series of appalling experiences began.
Do read the introduction to Raza Rants to learn about what this blog is all about.
The Lack of Emergency Medicine
We got to the hospital and the staff was asleep, except for the security guard.
We required a stretcher but since the staff was asleep, we settled on a wheelchair. We got the patient out of the car and someone went to wake the doctor up.
When we had explained the situation to the doctor he suggested that we take the ailing person to a bigger hospital, which was miles away and would cost us about 1 lac (that is a whole other can of worms).
We didn’t have time to scold or argue with the man so we turned towards another private hospital.
This one did have a doctor present, a very good one I might add.
Now comes the strangeness of the system of these hospitals.
I am in no way blaming the doctors because they did their jobs really well but the hospitals should consider revising their procedures for emergencies such as this.
Pay First – Treatment Later
While the doctor worked on the patient, we were instructed to pay the required fees and buy the necessary medicine.
Basically, you leave the ailing relation and go do all that while they wait for the receipt and the medicine to save the person’s LIFE!
I don’t know much about medical procedures, and if there is a doctor reading this then please correct me, but this seemed ridiculous to me.
Shouldn’t the hospital have emergency medicine on hand inside the very appropriately named EMERGENCY ROOM?
Shouldn’t they administer these medicines and not wait for the fee payment receipt?
Admit the Patient – Against the Policy
And another thing…this one was really frustrating.
The doctor informed us that the patient should be admitted to the hospital for a couple of days.
We were like sure, then he informed us that this hospital doesn’t allow patients to be admitted at night.
If the situation wasn’t so serious, I would’ve laughed at the man.
He recommended that we take the patient to a ‘bigger’ hospital or a government one.
We faced the same dilemma again. Pay the really high fee or face the environment of a neglected hospital.
After a long conversation the doctor found us a better solution, he prescribed some medication that will stabilize the patient until morning so we could take him home.
Tweak the System
A bit of research online shows that in many countries the emergency room procedures are simpler.
A patient is brought in, they are treated – no one asks the accompanying people to go do this or buy that – they are put into a room THEN comes the bill or costs and all that.
Some of the best ones don’t require any kind of payment.
I know it’s difficult to overhaul the system. But tweaking it for late night emergencies can save a lot of people some serious headaches.
Let me know if anyone else has had a bad experience like that at a hospital.
