One thing you see dotting the landscape in cities is the growing number of hospitals and clinics, with elegantly-designed logos proclaiming their presence in every postal zone. When I recently visited a reputed eye care centre, I found people who ordinarily would have fretted and fumed if they were made to wait in long queues in any other service counter or in a government office, sitting patiently for hours, going through the conveyor belt, getting drops for dilating the eyes, measurements from the technical staff, examination by a series of young doctors and finally reaching the sanctum sanctorum of the most famous surgeon in the city. They seemed to bear this long wait through the entire forenoon with characteristic stoicism.

TIRUMALA DARSHAN

It is almost like having a darshan in the Seven Hills, where one spends hours waiting in the long lines of queues to have a look at the Lord and get only a couple of minutes in front of Him.

Remember, twenty-four hours in a day aren't enough even for the most famous surgeon, if he wants to see all the patients and also do all the surgeries as demanded by his increasing clientele. He does what he can, as far as surgeries are concerned, beginning very early in the morning. Thus, he reaches his consulting chambers only well past noon. Yet, isn't it strange that patients should be asked to report at the clinic quite early in the morning? To be fair, the most famous surgeon, through a team of well-trained juniors, gets the patients examined thoroughly. But a Chennai patient, accustomed as he is to having none but the best, wants the verdict only, and that too directly, from the most famous surgeon alone. At last, well into the afternoon, post lunch, the patient gets to see the most famous surgeon, who, with his reassuring smile, relays his team's findings, which he read only a minute ago, with the best of bedside manner.

DEMIGOD

Why is it so? Patients belong to a culture where idolatry and creating a mythical icon of a demigod of a doctor is the norm. Here, patient community exchanges information regarding the reputation of the doctors in worshipful terms by word of mouth, and with time, the professional becomes a brand. Doctors too, in order to stay successfully in business, are compelled to sustain this myth. The longer he keeps the patients waiting, the better his brand image.

Even if the elderly among us long for the good old days, when visits to the doctor weren't so strenuous, and could be done for an affordable sum, those days are never going to return. Nor are we now reaping the efficiencies of good market mechanisms. With so much healthcare in private hands, it is indeed a business amenable to market-based solutions. For instance, we have no rating system of hospitals and doctors from which we can evaluate comparatively factors like waiting time, efficiency of procedures, outcomes, charges, nursing efficiencies, medicine prescriptions, aftercare etc. This may wean us away from brand preference. Even a public sector system like the National Health Service in the UK has made data regarding hospitals and surgeons available in public domain. In India, however, all we get is the periodic exposes of sensational and extreme cases of mismanagement in private healthcare. Isn't it time consumer activists get their act together and call for sharing information on consumer-related performance by private healthcare managers?

(The author is former Member, Ordnance Factories.)

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