Cashing in on helplessness?

IT IS almost certain that if you were indisposed you would race to a private hospital you trusted. Unless you still swear by the "excellent care at Government hospitals" like a senior IAS officer who insists that he goes only to the Government Hospital on Royapettah High Road. But for most people who can afford to pay or when institutions they are associated with pays for them, Government hospitals are not top on the list.When chance and necessity require that physicians intervene on your behalf (after all, many in the country prefer self-medication - taking cough syrup, mild laxatives, and even antibiotics) to try and restore you to a workable status, you would be staring at the ceiling from the bed in a sanitised room. And with a bunch of relatives and friends waiting to be seen to wish you the best.

As a patient, you are assured of the "care" and an ionospheric bill which will follow just after the doctor finally lets you go. But what of those who wish to be by your side when you need them least?

The facilities for an in-patient's relatives are abysmal at most places. While cruising down the road, you may come across a dozen hospitals and nursing homes by the time you count 100. Many of these cash in on helplessness.

A highrise hospital on Poonamallee High Road offers hardly any space for attendants. There is a cushioned bench in each room to serve as a bed for the attendant but not much else. The room is small with hardly any space for even one person to move around. But each pigeonhole means money and the maxim seems to be to maximise the returns from each sq.ft. of space. Neither the director nor the seniormost doctor was available to comment on the facilities for attendants.

Not far away from here was a couple of nurses at the reception desk of a cardiac care centre on Egmore High Road. They said there was no canteen. The reassurance was tacit - that the expressionless hospital securityman, whose brief was probably to trap patients who intended to vanish without paying their dues, would not prevent an attendant from going to any of the eateries which had mushroomed around the hospital. The lounge was barely 150 sq.ft. but had 15 moulded chairs tossed in, possibly to placate exasperated relatives.

A hospital in Anna Nagar, was pathetic. The use of floor space was maximised, leaving the rooms dark, and out of which peered cagey attendants of patients. A room that this correspondent peered into seemed no more than 100 sq.ft. That these were classified as single rooms (priced at Rs. 450 a day) or deluxe suites (priced at Rs. 750 a day) where a rickety AC unit was installed.

The canteen here sold hot beverages and was a misfit. The hygiene level of the cook and his aides showed that the hole was a misfit in the hospital in a prime locality. To a harried attendant, this too was a blessing. Or else he would have to walk long for an early morning tea. A small clinic elsewhere had just one bed. Despite the heavy odds against courtesy and tenderness thriving in this cloistered clinic, there was a woman on the bed, with her husband observing, like an adept chemist doing titration with a burette, the dextrose dripping into her vein from a disposable bottle hanging from the wall. For tea, snacks or meals, he would have to rush home or to one of the wayside restaurants some 200m away. Sleeping close by was ruled out because the care was timed to shut down around 10 p.m.

Surprisingly, even corporate hospitals fall short in providing quality facilities for the attendants. A medicare unit in prime locality has a sprawling lounge but a cramped canteen where snacks are priced to raise your eyebrows if not your appetite. But the milling crowd means there are takers. Given the antipathy to testing the load-bearing and locomotive capacity of one's legs, people probably hate to go for a walk and have meals at an eatery close by.

Another corporate entity, allows no food from outside. The snacks kiosk is a tiny hole on the side where a vending machine brews coffee. The price is steep but that bothers none. The rooms are small unless one chooses to stay in a deluxe suite.

A cardiac care centre in Mogaippair has a glass-encased lounge so sprawling that one could play football, but for the central pillars. The canteen is large, and though prices are high, the items are sold briskly. When a patient spends thousands on a surgery, he will not bother if snacks cost a few rupees more than in the polluted world outside the centrally air-conditioned, hospital.

Another medicare unit in the city has 45 rooms and cottages for attendants. The sprawling campus, rare in a space-starved metropolis like Chennai, with its tight canopy of green could aid a patient's recovery. But with nearly 700 in-patients, the number of rooms and cottages is inadequate, as many a patient comes from outside the State and is usually followed by a long train of attendants, who inevitably crowd the rooms, the lounge or any space available, especially at night. The hospital does not insist on the one-patient-one-attendant norm.

The canteen here is, let out to a contractor, is always crowded, patronised not only by patients and their relatives, but also by doctors who need a break between bouts of works. Meanwhile the restaurants across the road work for long hours.

Attendants are not always happy with the facilities in a hospital. One attendant was furious with the telephone operator who did not give her a number she wanted. After a bout of shouting, the operator kept her personal priority on hold and condescended to dial the attendant's number. Though the managing director alleged that patients usually held the line for hours each time, the fact is the call time could be controlled from the switchboard. The smile that envelops the telephone operator's face as she holds the receiver between her shoulder and her ear shows that the line is being used for personal calls - a slip that could harm any hospital's image.

The common complaint of attendants and relatives seems to be the rudeness of nursing staff and other ward boys. They tolerate this, as they believe that raising their voice could hurt the quality of care and even jeopardise the patient's safety.

Whatever it may be, there is no mandatory list of facilities an entrepreneur must follow to open a hospital. So either the patient or the attendant or both suffer an inconvenience. Other than an occasional eruption, the forgiving lot takes it all in their stride. They only look forward to their near-one's recovery sooner than later. For that could save a few thousand rupees.

GOUTAM GHOSH

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