“Good evening Mr Tata,” was how an elderly patient with tongue cancer at Kolkata’s Tata Medical Centre (TMC) greeted Ratan Tata, during his visit to the hospital last August.

The patient had lost much of his tongue but it had been reconstructed using a skin-flap. And his greeting was in response to Tata’s query if he would be able to speak.

But it did not stop there, says Mammen Chandy, TMC director. Tata asked if the patient would be able to taste. The answer was a no, as skin (unlike the tongue) does not have taste-buds. But the point Chandy makes is, “Mr Tata’s visits to the hospital are never superficial.” In fact, Tata is spearheading healthcare initiatives into the East with satellite centres, says Chandy, speaking of a face of the Tata Group that touches people’s lives, without much ado.

Shared-care model The plan is for a “shared-care” model of collaboration between TMC and existing facilities, so patients need not travel out of Nagaland or Arunachal Pradesh, for instance. And a representative from Tata’s office is drawing up this plan.

Both Ratan Tata, as then Group Chairman, and his successor Cyrus Mistry, had visited the hospital last year when Tata Global Beverages’ annual general meeting was taking place in Kolkata. Mistry visited the hospital this year, too, as Chairman.

Though their styles differ — “Tata has an aura that surrounds him”, while Mistry is more “down to earth and approachable” — the group’s commitment to healthcare has been unflinching, says Chandy.

Mistry is also keen that TMC has a basic healthcare outreach in villages around the group’s steel plant at Gopalpur, Odisha.

Tata Medical is no sibling to Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) started by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust in 1941. Taken over by the Health Ministry in 1957, TMH’s administrative control changed hands to the Department of Atomic Energy in 1962.

But TMH still has three members from the Tata trusts on its governing council. And patients continue to be supported, from funds to 300 food plates everyday, a representative says.

And two more 100-bed TMH hospitals are being built in Chandigarh and Visakhapatnam. Geeta Gopalakrishnan, fund-raiser with Kolkata’s 167-bed TMC, agrees that the commitment to healthcare remains unchanged.

The hospital is supported by the Dorabji Trust and other Tata group companies, says Chandy.

After 42 years of service at CMC Vellore, Chandy was clear he would not join a corporate hospital “where money, and not compassion, is the bottomline”.

With quality facilities provided to all, irrespective of whether patients pay or not, Chandy says this year saw 11,000 new patients, of whom about 40 per cent were non-paying or subsidised.

 jyothi.datta@thehindu.co.in

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