Columbia Asia, Salt Lake, Kolkata: Horrible hospital for maternity care, please make 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 an honest review of the problems I faced as-is, for which I escalated to the hospital admin multiple times during the stay of my wife & my newborn 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 the 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 at her mother, my sister inquired the nurses on the 4th floor & they replied -’We do not know’. She immediately went to the 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 the 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 a huge sum of money to these so-called corporate hospitals, was it the responsibility of my family to coordinate & do the running around like a Sarkari hospital? We finally could understand that there was so less number of nurses in the 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 the 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_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 & pinpointed the source of the 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 d