India is fast becoming (or already become) a medical tourism destination and Chennai with an array of impressive names of hospitals is surely one of the coveted places for medical tourism.
Because of this sudden surge of foreign patients and NRIs coming in for treatment, our city hospitals becoming more and more money minded and less service oriented, especially towards the locals. I keep hearing many bad feedbacks on various hospitals. I myself had couple of bad experiences and like to narrate the one with MIOT Hospitals, Chennai.
My best friends’ mom is an arthritis patient. She’s been suffering for so many years now. Many doctors were consulted and it was concluded that surgery was the only way out. Many people suggested MIOT, because of the availability of good doctors and all modern equipments, and its famous for knee surgery.
So my friend fixed up an appointment with the chief doctor for consultation. At the time of consultation, the chief Doctor hardly spent any time on investigating the condition of the patient, but straight away started talking about the operation, more in commercial terms. He was explaining the tariff etc.
At this point my friend raised a doubt about the fitness of his mom, since we felt she was very weak and asked if she could withstand the effect of the surgery or not, for which he got a very rude and blunt reply from the doctor, in Tamil asking "Inga nee doctara illa naana? Enakku ellam theriyum" literally means "Who’s the doctor here, you or me? I know everything!!". So he kept quite, cursing himself for asking the question.
We believed in the ability of the Dr and decided to be patient till the surgery is complete.
After the consultation, she was recommended to undergo lot of tests and the test results were reviewed (?!!?!!) and the she was asked to get admitted for the operation. We were told that she will undergo a Total knee replacement surgery, for one knee this month and another operation for the other knee after 3 months. The total cost of the package was one lakh seventy thousand (for one knee), which includes A/C room for 10 days, food for the patient, doctor’s fee, operation charges etc, to be paid in full in advance. One good point here is that this hospital accepts credit card without any transaction fee.
On the day of admission, just as a precaution, my friend called up the hospital to find out about the availability of the doctor, room and admission timings etc and we were told to come ASAP. We were in the hospital at 10 AM and gave all the details to person at the reception. He immediately again started explaining the commercial part and asked us to wait. The patient was made to sit on the wheel chair (she’s weak, 60 years old and she can hardly walk a few yards, and cannot sit in the same position for a long time). Our waiting looked never ending.
In spite of our repeated queries, we were not given any proper reply and had no clue as to what’s going to happen next. We were waiting at the reception till 2.30 pm, and the poor lady was struggling in the wheel chair. It was noisy and chaotic all around. At around 2.30 we were called and asked to pay the fee at the cash counter. This was the fastest thing happened, within 5 minutes we came back after paying the full amount by credit card.
After that, she was taken to a general ward. We objected to this, because we should have been given an a/c room for the package. They convinced us by saying that all the rooms are full and they are still waiting for some patients to vacate and promised to allocate a room by 5 in the evening, which never happened though. The general ward was not clean. There were too many beds and hardly any space for the attender to sit. We were advised by the nurse that the patient should not be fed as she has to undergo the surgery the next day. Apart from that no one came for any checkup etc and no other preparation for the surgery was done.
The surgery did not take place the next day, instead we were told that the patient was weak, and needs to be prepared for the surgery. So she was sent to the ICU and no one was allowed to see her. After 2 days they informed us that she was still too weak and said that surgery was not possible!!!!! We were advised to take her back home and come back after 3 months, during which she was prescribed vitamin supplements etc. She was discharged immediately and given a bill of Rs.20, 000. They said they will refund the money we paid for the operation deducting this amount.
If we get her admitted the next time, i.e. after 3 months, again we have to pay the full amount prevailing at that time. (mind you the cost increases by atleast 10% each month, infact they highlighted this point and asked us to get her admitted as soon as possible, when we went for the first consultation).
At the end we paid 20, 000 for nothing. Right from the beginning we were worried about her fitness; it was the first question we asked the Doctor during our first ever visit to MIOT.
They were so lethargic that they never bothered explain anything other than the commercial part. Had they felt the patient was weak, they should have atleast given us a clue before. How did they fail to observe that the patient was weak when she was taken for consultation and lab tests?
Overall, MIOT is one hopeless place. The doctors whom we interacted with were rude and admin staffs were not helpful.
Overall, what they promise and what they do is totally different.