I live in East Bangalore and Manipal hospital(being the only famous hospital in the area) was my logical choice when I started expecting my child. My experience with the hospital was very bad. Although the charges of the hospital are at par with any BIG private hospital like Apollo or Fortis, the infrastructure is very very poor and not at all comparable.
Being a very old hospital, the waiting areas, cafeteria or lifts don’t come anywhere close to being in "good condition". Everytime I went there, I thought I have come to a’mela’. Such is the crowd in the hospital. One has to wait for 20 minutes to take one of the three elevators available(just to move to another floor).
But I thought, since there were people coming to the hospital, it must be good. What I learnt was that the doctors and machines at the hospital were good. But the experience that I am going to tell you now speaks that even the doctors are NOT GOOD.
Before I start, I must tell you that the staff at Manipal is not at all courteous. I think they are all frustrated by the number of patients they have to handle in a day. They are rude and impolite.
So my experience is like this:
I had to get my 33rd week ultrasound done. Majorly, I needed to check if my placenta(which was low in previous scan) had moved higher. So I took an appointment for a weekend(since I am free only on weekends). I got an appointment for saturday with Dr Dharini. Three days before my appointment, I get a call from Manipal asking me to come the next day(a thursday) and that too during office hours. When I asked why, I was told that the doctor was going on leave and that was the only appointment available. I was also asked to bring my previous ultrasound report.
Both my husband and I had to take a half day from work to go for the ultrasound. When we filled up the required forms, we were asked to wait for sometime. We ended up waiting for almost an HOUR! After that I was sent to the ultasound room. When I gave my old ultrasound report, the sister asked me for earlier reports. I said I had no idea that I was supposed to carry all of them and thought that only the previous one was required. To which she gave a frown and said "Kyun nahi laye? Pata hona chahiye tha na". I was surprised by this response!
This ultrasound room was small and dark, with a monitor placed at almost the back of the patient.(did they not want the patient to look at her own baby?). The ultrasound was started by Dr. Dharini with almost three other helpers/sisters/assistants in the room. And then started the pain. Dr. Dharini started pressing the ultrasound device on my belly so hard that I shrieked. I told her it was hurting me, to which she just smiled but kept pressing.(I later got to know from my gynae that ultrasounds are not supposed to be painful. rather they SHOULD NOT BE!)
The entire time during the ultrasound all the ladies in the room, including Dr. Dharini kept chatting in Kannada(which I don’t understand) and cracking jokes and laughing! I felt I was at a beauty parlour rather than a hospital. My husband too felt awkward sitting there with a bunch of’girlies’. Moreover, though Dr. Dharini was doing the ultrasound, she was not noting down any measurements in the machine that she was using, rather she was dictating the measurements to the other girls in between the chit chats.(Later when I got the report, I knew that some of the measurements that she had mentioned were noted down wrongly! Mis-communication!)
I told Dr. Dharini that I needed the measurements of the placenta. She said that the placenta was not visible and that she will have to an internal scan for the same.(Now, an internal scan is more expensive, but since I had no choice, I agreed).
After the internal scan, I was asked to change back to my clothes(in an adjoining bathroom). While I was in the room changing, the next lady patient was also asked to change and the door was opened for her.(I could not believe how they did that.no privacy?). I had to ask her to wait. When I came back in ultrasound room, the other patient was all ready for an internal exam and was on the chair. She must have felt so embarassed to be in that position with a complete stranger. I wondered why the doctor could not have asked the next patient to wait for two more minutes so that I could change and leave!
Anyhow, I thought the ordeal was over and we got our reports. We were surprised to find that the report had no images with it! Usually with an ultrasound, the images are supplied. When we asked for the same, we were told that the images are not given.(I later learnt that there was some power issue with some machines and hence, the images could not be printed). So we paid a lot and did not even get the images!
The worst part of the report was that the placenta measurements were wrong. I had my doubts on the measurements given and so I got another ultrasound done at Mallya hospital the next day and the measurements came out okay. So it was confirmed that the reports were WRONG!
Overall, the experience was BAAAD. Not just the staff, but the infrastructure, the crowd, the wrong reports and the DOCTORS.all were bad.
I am not going back to Manipal for sure.