April 04, 2010

HOW CAN WE REFORM THE HEALTH CARE SECTOR?

According to Russian playwright and master of the modern short story Anton Chekhov “Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.” & now a days malpractices and a great exploitation in Health Care sector in India proving it completely & showing its corrupt image, meeting specialist doctors and getting affordable treatment becomes a distant dream in India due to various factors. Doctors not relying or trusting upon various lab report and they advise us to take lab report of their own choice.
Most of the time, doctors prescribe unwanted tests and expensive medicines, which only increase the complication. How one can trust a specialist doctor?
  • My question now is how do different testing centers show different results?
  • Why does every time a doctor compels the patient to get unwanted tests done?
  • How can a patient trust reports showing varying results from different testing centers?
  • How can the patients ensure that the tests done were genuine and the reports are based on the samples submitted by them?
  • What is the basic right of a patient when he approaches the doctor regarding treatment, fee, avoid/ telling them to prescribe the cheapest generic medicine available locally etc?
  • How can we stop such medical practitioners from extracting enormous amounts from poor patients by misguiding them, and bring more transparency into the system.
  • What is the code of conduct for the doctors and what
  • mechanism is available to redress the grievance of poor patients who have not been provided proper treatment by the doctors.
  • What is the simplest method available to understand that
  • specialist doctors/ other doctors (acting like well organized trade unionist) have conducted a proper diagnosed and whether a third party can be involved to inspect the results?
  • What are the standards for pricing mechanism of Pharma products as multinationals make billions by charging exorbitant rates? There is no transparency in product pricing even for generic medicine.
My suggestions for reformation:-
  • A specialized body comprising doctors, consumer activist, NGOs, Lawyers and other eminent persons should be appointed by the govt. instead of depending only on MCI (medical council of India) and other doctors’ body. It will be a biased body and one doctor cannot go against another doctor as outside forces like Pharmaceutical, testing centers, super specialty hospital and other vested interest try to protect the doctors who are engaged in malpractices.
  • There should be an increase in the number of medical seats in a specialized field to reduce acute shortage and monopoly of the existing specialist doctors and bring competition into the medical profession.
  • Strict code of conduct for doctors should be implemented
  • considering the above suggestion and rights of the patients should be displayed in every hospital, clinic and dispensary both inside and outside the doctor’s room and doctor’s fee should also be displayed.
  • Unwanted prescription and testing at all level should be avoided.
  • There should be a pricing mechanism for all medicines especially generic medicines and a special body should monitor the activities of pharmaceutical companies in order to break the nexus between doctor and pharmaceutical companies, testing centers, and special hospital with multiple facilities.
  • It is the right of the patient to be informs about the manner so medication, fees, and other things. Some hospital after admitting patients never allow their relatives to take discharge while the patient is getting wrongly diagnosed and given improper treatment just to extract money in the name of testing.
At last I would like to say that our medical sector also get corrupt like other sectors & needs reformation with implementing Strict code of conduct for doctors & teach moral value to the youngsters especially the medical students & no other option remains to correct it, as the mater of fact the patient is always at the mercy of the doctors, they are doing illegal work but through legal way so without any medical knowledge & proof, how can we correct them, I think only God can reform the medical sector & no one can.

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