This was an answer I wrote for a good friends question, I rather thought of posting it again on the wall, as most of my FB friends are general public and they would understand the plight! His question was why not to think from a patients side on increasing treatment cost So I wrote Dear XXXXX Its very early to comment, unless you watch the program U see it U will understand the humiliation No investigation is written blindly untill and unless required A four or “Quad” slice CT scanner will cost between 2,00,000 US$ Thats 1.2 crores ₹ No doctor would have the capital to invest so much just for a machine. Bharath scan and Arthi scans are run not by doctors but business magnates.... Doctors are just tools over there.... Its like you guys working for Wipro or Cognizant.... These MNC make billions of profit But maximum you get is 1-1.25 lakhs salary Same way these doctors get a maximum pay of 80,000.... An MBBS pass out gets 12,000₹ and after 15 years it reaches a max of 30,000 A fresh BDS pass out cant imagine anything more than 10000₹ Doctors lives are pathetic now.... The only way any doctor can make a decent living is by starting thier own clinic. Starting a dental clinic requires a minimum of 10lakhs of ₹..... Latter comes thier management skills, unfortunately all the students learn good medicine or dentistry in college but are totally void of management skills and they turn a failure in 5 years and sell or shut down their clinic. About these high profile diagnostic centres I dont blame these high profile centres.... They do a good job and are ethical... Its nothing wrong to charge 5000₹ for a 1.2 crore machine That means you need 2400 ct scans just to take back the money... I personally had to pay 3800 for a scan for my kin..As a professional courtesy they gave 1200₹ discount... But I had health insurance coverage WHO IS STOPPING THE PUBLIC FROM TAKING A HEALTH INSURANCE NO BODY WANTS TO PAY A PREMIUM AND LATTER THEY CRIB ON DOCTORS AND DIAGNOSTIC CENTRES WHEN THEY HAVE TO PAY FROM POCKET In western countries medical cost is 10times of whats in India... No individual can dream of paying from thier pocket and every one has a health insurance. This January my dad took an advanced pace maker at Apollo... It was an emergency it costed a double figure lakh... We werent sure about the insurance company paying such a huge coverage... We had to scrape every penny we had.... But it no time the company repaid the expenses and the promising apollo insurance office finished the job in 3 days before he was discharged! We just paid 850₹ for miscellaneous expense. Medical tourism is roaring in India because of quality treatment at reduced cost, the foreigners take this treatment happily with thier insurance coverage... Indians dont wanna waste Money on insurance and latter weep thier pocket.... See the scenario of Apollo,MIOT And other giants... Its more of the foreigners who benefit by thier quality protocols! Yes... All these centres offer a cut on the referrals...when we asked The MD of a mammoth diagnostic centre... He said that the cut is a part of thier advertising expenses or rather they consider that its a small share for the doctors as they consider them as thier business partners..... If you dont want the cut, we can always reduce the same on your patient! So the diagnostic centre where I refer, they dont give a cut and they give the discount on my patients! No good doctors would force patients on diagnostics just for this cut sake.... Finally As the Good cop and bad cop story There are also good doctors and bad doctors same like good vs bad professionals in every profession Its the duty of the patient to identify this good doctor!
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 06:33:52 +0000