Horrible hospital for maternity care, please take an informed decision. I am writing this review for the hospital as I feel that it is necessary for the wider audience to know the standards of treatments provided by Columbia Asia, Kolkata. This is a honest review on the problems I faced as-is, for which I escalated to the hospital admin multiple times during the stay of my wife & my new born child. My impression of the hospital is that, Columbia Asia is a good hospital if & only if the mother & child are healthy on their own. If there are any medical issues(like it was in my case after my son was born), the performance of the hospital is lackluster to say the least. Please note, the doctors Abhinibesh Chatterjee & Pallab Chatterjee are the very best that Kolkata has to offer(I revere them even more now like demigods), but I believe they were let down because I chose this hospital for maternity care of my wife instead of some other hospital where I could get both these doctors to look after my son & wife. The story goes like this:
Day_1(24/Aug/2017): My son was born in Columbia Asia on 24th August, 2017. At the time of birth, there was some breathing trouble for which he was placed in Neonatal ICU. He was to be shifted to his mother in the evening, which did not happen as he turned pale blue just when the nurses in ICU were preparing to take him to his mother So he continued to remain in ICU & the problems started after that. Dr Pallab Chatterjee suspected(rightly) that he had a minute hole in his heart, & advised to get his Echo done immediately. I contacted the hospital admin & they advised that the echo would be done next day, around 11.00 am IST. Visibly tensed, I stayed back to understand the seriousness of his problem & it was around 10.00 PM at night.
Incident_1(Day_1, 24/Aug/2017): My family members were waiting for the child to arrive from ICU(1st floor) to my wife(4th floor), at around 4.00 pm. My sister went to the ICU & the nurses told her that they have informed the nurses on the 4th floor to bring the baby carrier to shift the baby. Even at 5.00 pm when the baby did not arrive to her mother, my sister inquired the nurses on 4th floor & they replied -’We do not know’. She immediately went to 1st floor again & again the nurses in ICU told her that 4th floor nurses have been informed. Immediately, she came back to 4th floor & again the nurses told that they have no info of bringing baby carrier to neo ICU at 1st floor. By this time, my son started going pale blue again in ICU & finally could not be shifted out. Even after paying huge sum of money to these so called corporate hospitals, was it the responsibility of my family to co-ordinate & do the running around like a sarkari hospital? We finally could understand that there were so less number of nurses in 4th floor, that they were not willing to vacate their positions & go to 1st floor. Such is the unprofessionalism of Columbia Asia.
Incident_2(Day_1): My wife was to be served supper at around 6.00 pm IST & she was in a twin sharing. As per chart, her supper was to include a protein ingredient of chicken soup & other snacks. But she was served vegetarian soup & later my cousin sister discovered that the lady sharing the room with my wife had got my wife’s supper which she had consumed & my wife was served the lady’s supper. Complete mismanagement from the part of the nurses, who in this case failed to adhere to the diet charts of both the patients. Great!
Incident_3(Day_1): While I was doing the running around, I got a call from my wife at 9.45 pm IST, that dinner has not been served to her. Wow! A patient who had her caesarian that morning, has not had her dinner. I inquired with the admin officer(Mr. Rajnikant) & later I found that there was some miscommunication between the kitchen team & nutritionist, so they did not serve her dinner at all while all other patients had completed their dinner by 9.00 pm IST. Finally dinner was served to her at around 10.30 pm IST, else she would have gone unfed for the night if not highlighted to me by her in time.
Incident_4(Day_2, 25/Aug/2017): I arrived at the hospital at 10.00 am IST & inquired the status of the scheduled ECHO test at Neo-ICU. I was told that it would happen as per schedule at 11.00 am IST. At 11.30 am IST, nothing had happened. I inquired again & was told that the doc who will do it, will arrive at 1.00 pm IST. So I had to wait. 15 minutes later, I was told that the doc is on’leave’. What? A day old baby is waiting for an echo as dr. Chatterjee had asked for an immediate report & you are saying that doc is on leave. What am I supposed to do now? Wait? I immediately reached out to admin team & told that give me an audience in 15 minutes. A lady arrived(I forgot her name & she told that she reports to the general manager Arindam Banerjee) & I told her that what is the meaning of’immediate’ in your dictionary? Is it 15 minutes, 24 hours or time infinite?. My son needs an echo immediately. If I do not find you completing the echo within next 1 hour, I will start making calls to some highly placed acquaintances in the West Bengal government & then things will not remain in your hands. I was told to wait & within 15 minutes that lady called me to inform that they are calling the doc from leave & the echo will start any time from now. This incident is an avid example of the callousness of the hospital. They lodge a one day old baby in Neo ICU & fail to take necessary actions of Echo on time & it was only after me giving out unequivocal warnings things moved forward.
Incident_5(Day_2 & later day 3): The doc(cardiologist) who arrived later performed the echo & informed me that my son had Ventricular Septal Defect(a hole in the ventral wall)(bang right as Dr. Pallab Chatterjee had suspected earlier) & that is why impure blood mixing is causing sudden dip of O2 levels in my son causing him to turn blue. She informed that my baby needs to be checked by a Neo-Cardiologist(specialist doctors who look after baby cardiac issues) as she was a cardiologist & does not specialize on baby issues. I checked with the hospital immediately(that admin lady) & I was gutted. The hospital does not have any Neo cardiologists for the last 6 months. The callous response I got was’Did dr. Abhinibesh Chatterjee’ not tell you about this’? Wow! Now the onus was put on me as to I had check prior to admitting my patient in the hospital that whether they had all specialists in place. Was I an astrologer who would know in advance that my son would be born with VSD? Having a neo cardiologist is a basic requirement as a baby born with a cardiac issue would need immediate attention from one but Columbia Asia had none for 6 months!. Both my cars now started crisscrossing the city with me & family armed with the echo report of my son in different hospitals(Apollo, BM Birla, RN Tagore & AMRI) where there were neo-cardiologists available to check the seriousness of the medical condition. All this running around could have been avoided had Columbia Asia had a mere neo-cardiologist visiting, which was absent & you call yourself Multispecialty! What for?
Incident_6(Day 4 & 5, 28 & 29/Aug/2017): Dr. Pallab Chatterjee took great care of my son & kept him stable for the remaining 4 days he stayed there in Neo-ICU. But since there was no neo-cardiologist in the hospital he made arrangements for my son to be shifted to some other hospital under some other doctors supervision. Although he was not visiting that new hospital(which I would not like to name here), he very kindly made all arrangements for the shifting to take place smoothly. Before I shifted out my baby from Columbia Asia, I knew there was a confirmed neo-icu bed he would get in the new hospital. At the time of billing, they dropped the final bomb shell. They informed that while my wife’s bills could be paid via a debit card(after adjusting from my corporate mediclaim), they would not accept my son’s bill by debit card. I had to pay cash! Why? They had not mentioned this at the time I did booking for my wife 15 days earlier. Although they would receive payment for my wife via debit card they would simply not accept online payment for my son whose bill was around 90, 000 now. This is a clear effort by the hospital to hoard black money in cash. I was in a bind as I was using their ambulance to shift my baby out & time was a premium. Had my baby had been perfect, I would not have budged & would have forced them to accept payment via debit card mode. My father bailed me out & I paid the bill of my son entirely in cash. Later I found out, that they follow this malpractice of accepting payments of newborn babies only in cash(as I came to know from colleagues having prior experience). Income Tax department should have a look into this malpractice of them hoarding massive amount of cash & I can very well understand that these cash payments are never highlighted in their IT returns as earnings. Black money, is it?
Incident_7(29/Aug/2017, after my son shifted to a new hospital): In the new hospital, my son undertook another ECHO test again. Now the report was vivid & pin pointed the source of problem in his heart. Later I came to know that Columbia Asia hospital does not have an ECHO machine suited for a baby. The test was done on a machine which was for adults. The cardiologist who did the Echo at Columbia Asia tuned the machine to suit by one day old son. She delivered a report which was good but quite basic in nature as she did not have the correct machine at her disposal. I can place both the reports from Columbia Asia & the other hospital & anyone can find the perfection in the report of the later. Can you imagine? A so called multi-specialty hospital does not have a mere machine & this is due to extreme levels of cost cutting as they do not bother to buy an echo machine suited for a toddler.
Incident_8(After my son was released from Columbia Asia, 01/Sep/2017): Two days after my son shifted to the new hospital they asked for the vaccination booklet of my son. To my dismay, I found that the vaccination booklet had the name’Baby of Tama Saha’ on it(& not my wife’s name). I immediately recollected that b/o Tama Saha was admitted in the Neo ICU at Columbia Asia with my son. So effectively, they had misplaced & interchanged the vaccine booklets while releasing my son. I was so angry I immediately called up the hospital & inquired for the vaccine booklet. It was nowhere to be found. I went to the hospital & met the nursing head(I forgot the lady’s name), & asked her to produce the booklet & show me physical proofs of counter signed forms to be filled by nurses at the time of administering the vaccines. Either of the possibilities were open. Either my son was administered a vaccine of opv/some other vaccine after birth or none was given. If given, I had to stop double vaccination to happen in the new hospital. If not given, I had to get it done in the hospital where my son was admitted currently. The nursing head took me to her room & showed me physical counter signed forms but could never give me the original booklet with stickers on it. Rather she gave a duplicate booklet & signed it but that had no label of vaccines. Imagine about this callous behavior of the hospital wherein they make two families suffer at the same time.
Incident_9(When my wife was 6 months’ pregnant, lack of emergency care): My wife was 6-months pregnant & one night at around 11.00 pm IST she felt tremendous abdominal pain. I immediately rushed her to Columbia Asia as I had planned to do the delivery some time later there. To my utter dismay, I found that the doctor in emergency was a very young lady(even younger than me) & would keep my wife waiting writhing in pain until she got instructions from other doctors on phone who were not available in the middle of the night. We kept on waiting for about 90 minutes while my wife continued suffering, until finally a doctor arrived & bailed my wife out. I should have understood that this hospital is very callous & performs extreme levels of cost cutting to shore up profits by keeping a junior doc attending emergency in the middle of night. The junior doc was not up to the mark as she only remained on phone taking instructions from other docs & kept my wife waiting-waiting & waiting. This was the 1st sign that all is not well at this hospital but I gave them a benefit of doubt & took the worst decision of admitting my wife in this hospital 3 months later for delivery. Who knew at that point of time what was in store for me?
Thank you for the patient read, I know it is long but I wanted to make it as detailed as possible. Please inquire & then admit your patient for maternity services in Columbia Asia, Kolkata. This hospital is good only-&-only if your wife & child are in good health, post-surgery. God forbid, if something happens to them after surgery like in my case, you are in the worst possible place & you would have no one else to kick for your decision but yourself.