Lessons to learn from the tragedy at AMRI

After hearing the tragic news of what happened at AMRI today, I too have been shocked and sad at the carnage that took many valuable lives of patients. But after all the shock and grieve, we need to come to our senses and need to learn some useful lessons from this episode.

My emotions on this tragedy are of shock, horror and most alarmingly, I have a sense of fear that this points to something diabolically wrong with us as a people.

As usual I am shocked on the incident considering the pain of those who trusted the hospital authorities before admitting their loved ones and expected those patients would be taken care of well.

As a resident of Kolkata, I know how hard it is for common people in Kolkata to admit some relative to a hospital like that of AMRI. The reason behind that is that it is extremely difficult for common people to pay those exponentially amount of bills of a hospital like AMRI. Until and unless, it is absolute emergency, people do not find it conducive to admit patients simply because of the ever increasing hospital tariffs. Yet people admit their loved ones, simply because AMRI is a high brand-name when it comes to Hospitals in Kolkata.

To explain how high the bills could become let me give one example. I remember one of my friends admitting his mother in one of those big brand-name hospitals some years back after she was badly burnt in a fire related accident at her home. The doctors diagnosed that she was around 30 per cent burnt. The doctors initially charged around Rs. 6 Lakhs for her treatment for the total duration of one month. They promised that she would be cured well within that period. But even before the one month period had expired, my friend and his relatives were communicated a bill amount of around Rs 30 Lakhs for the patient’s treatment in that time. She, according to her own doctors, was not even properly cured at the time.

Now when you admit some close relative with those very high costs involved, you expect them to be taken care of properly. One assures himself or herself that best treatment and care that his or her hard earned money can buy. Now if this kind of a situation arrives suddenly where after admitting your seriously ill loved one the previous night, you watch with disbelief in the morning that the very hospital has turned into an inferno, and in the evening found out that your relative is no more thanks to the fire, well I do not have any other ways to express that mood. It is of sheer horror.

But what is more alarming to me is the attitude on the part of some people; that leads to those incidents.

My dear readers we talk a lot about corruption in our economy and politics but what about corruption in the morals of our society that causes these kinds of tragedies.

To explain to my dear readers what I mean let me give an example. In one of these highly costly hospitals in Kolkata, a friend of mine had admitted his father. The poor old man’s situation was critical and he needed to be put on with a life support system. After some days, the hospital authorities had declared the patient dead and released the body after obtaining a very heavy bill amount.

Now my friend somehow thought everything was not right about this incident. Fortunately for him, he happened to know someone working closely with the doctors. From him, he got an inside news, his father had passed away some days back before the hospital authorities had actually declared his father dead.

But the doctors, after some very strong pressure from the high level hospital authorities had decided to keep the dead body under life support system just to inflate the bill as much as they can.

Now to me, this was not only horrific or shocking but this represents a clear cut moral issue.

The hospital authorities treat the critical medical cases as businessmen treat business opportunities for profit and as a consequence they are willing to squeeze as much as they can from it.

I remember asking a very high level marketing guy who was working with one of these big brand hospitals, why the tariffs were so high there. He said, the hospital authorities, need to charge that much only to ensure their brand value. The logic involved here is that if the people think they are paying hugely for their treatment, then they will think that is the best treatment they are getting in return.

This to me clearly suggests the moral problem that I am trying to explain here. When patients become money making machines for hospital authorities then surely they will do everything possible in their ways to squeeze the profits out.

That is why, doctors are put under pressure to come up with ever inflating bills and that is why fire-prevention systems are not properly maintained as these may not be very profitable for the hospital owners for various reasons.

The gesture to compensate each of the victims with Rs 5 Lakhs by the respective hospital authority in question is that much cause of alarm for me. It not only highlights an attitude on the part of the authorities that money can buy everything including people’s emotions but it also suggests that no corrective measures will probably taken to prevent these kinds of situations hereafter.

This moral breakdown whereby individual patients are considered another piece of transaction is more of concern to me. And that will not change until we change as a people.