This the e-mail I wrote today to COO of Fortis Group: Warning to all readers, go to Fortis at your own peril.
Dear Mr. Bhatia
I am sure Fortis is a state of the art hospital and has a motto “patient first”, and these were the “actions” of doctors, staff at fortis to demonstrated the vision, mission of your organisation. This is to bring to your notice our extreme experience, at Fortis Hospital Noida, which we are sure will definitely surprise you if not make you aghast,
Background: We shifted our mother, Mrs Prabha Beri from Indo Gulf hospital (where she was undergoing treatment for septic shock and UTI, E-coli bacteria infection) on 30th March at 4PM, after due consultations with Dr. Mrinal Sircar at 12Noon, (this was our 2nd consultation with him, the 1st being on 28th March), both these consultations were being done after a very strong reference of Dr. Vaishnav (ex HOD-Internal Med-Fortis, Noida).
- We reached Fortis in the ambulance to Fortis at 3:30PM, and since then we were waiting for Dr. Sircar visit as she had respiratory issues and Dr. Sircar had asked her to shift asap so that he can start the line of treatment for the said problem. But the line of treatment at Indo Gulf was being repeated at fortis again and no line of treatment of respiratory issue was being done, for which we had shifted.
We were still waiting for Dr. Sircar and came to know that Dr. Sircar will visit on Monday, 1st April now, and in the meanwhile all kinds of test were being done which were repetition of what Indogulf hospital had done, CT Scan, X-Rays, KFT, Blood tests, Urine tests etc. So the purpose of shifting her in an emergency for respiratory issue treatment failed for 2 days, which could have been critical.
- My mother was admitted on the 4th floor , where construction activity was going on and on Monday morning (1st April)when the Dr. Sircar visited he himself was coughing due to all the dirt and pollution due to the construction activity, now I am sure you can understand that admitting a patient with respiratory issues on the floor where construction activity is in full swing, could have been lethal, we eventually fought for shifting to another floor and got a room on the 1st floor.
3.This is the most important and amazing event, yesterday morning, we were supposed to be discharged and the doctor visited us in the morning and advised 2 medicines, and asthma pump inhalation as continued treatment, but when at 6 PM we eventually got the discharge, the nurse came and was explaining the discharge summary and the medicines to be taken, which had 7 medicines including 2 injections (one of which was supposed to be given on Sunday, 7th April).
Fortunately my father’s presence of mind worked and he told the nurse the discussion he had with the doctor in the morning where we were advised only 2 medicines, The nurse smelled something wrong and on the pretext of getting the summary signed from the doctor went away, and when she came back with the summary, it came out that the previous summary had 1st page of my mother and 2nd page (on which medicines were written) was of some other patient. This could have life threatening if we were not educated enough to understand the situation.
Mr. Bhatia, I am writing this to you with an expectation that the senior office of yours will take some tough action on the same as this information can save some innocent lives at least, in future.
For Information- I have been in touch with Mr. Guruprasad at Fotis corporate office and brought to his notice the first 2 careless, irresponsible actions, listed above.
I am sure you would understand the agony, pain and anger which we are going through because of these episodes with a prayer to God on our lips and we should never ever have to come back to Fortis,