Narayana Hrudayalaya: “Low cost low cos” : They need to stop fooling the media and the public….
I have read about this hospital for so many years-free surgeries, low cost surgeries etc etc etc. Its owner is portrayed as a man for whom money is a dirty word, where doing good for the poor is his only motivation. However last month I was the first hand recipient of the not so low cost experience at this hospital. A workers son got sick in the middle of the night and was emergently admitted in the cardiac icu. By the next morning his bill was 14000 rupees. Although the family said they had no money the cash counter and finance department refused to listen to their pleas. They were told-pay up.
By the time they contacted me for help their bill was 42000 rs and this is without any surgery being done. When they did switch him to a ‘package’ for heart surgery this 42000 was over and above that. I asked them to ask for the ‘free’ package which is so widely publicized and the family was instead hit with a bill for 1.25 lakhs plus some other charges. This poor family was unable to pay the total of 1.7 lakhs needed and were about to take the child home to die when I gathered some friends and we helped organize it for them.
What happens to the countless others who cannot afford the treatment? My concern is not that Narayana Hrudayalaya charges so much for surgeries. All hospitals do. My issue is that Narayana has gone on record to say it is for the poor, money does not matter, free surgeries are done etc etc and in reality, this is not the case. It appeared to me that Narayana Hrudayalaya had gone off track-from proclamations of ‘for the poor’ it appears to be ‘for the rich’. Why proclaim they are for the poor when clearly they are not.
I request the media to investigate properly before broadcasting tall and untrue claims of hospitals and doctors.