It is politically correct for both the government and the industry to talk of initiatives that are “patient centric”. But, the recent controversy involving Johnson & Johnson's faulty hip implants reveal a reality that often surfaces in a healthcare controversy. Patients literally need to shout to be heard when it comes to their grievance redressal and compensation, for instance.

Taking the hip implant case as an example, patients here have not just forked out money for an expensive surgery but some have had to live the aftermath of a faulty product. And that includes pain, constant discomfort and disability, to mention a few adverse effects. And yet, their narratives reveal how it took a chance meeting with a doctor or media reports, years after the product was recalled, for patients to understand the link between their pain and the surgery they had undergone. If the system was indeed patient-centric, then both the government regulators and the company (through hospitals that did the surgeries) should have gone all out to contact patients and addressed their problems linked to the faulty implant.

Instead we see that patients have had to pursue their cases over the years with the drug regulatory authorities to get it investigated and their medical problems redressed.

Even expert committees set up to assess a patient’s case before outlining compensation, for example, did not have a patient voice on board. In fact, patients and their families are now demanding a representation at such deliberations. A discussion on compensation, for instance, would be able to deliver a more meaningful redressal if it had a patient’s voiceexplaining the struggle and pain.

Since compensating a health-related mishap is not easy, often administrators rely on existing insurance models. A patient perspective becomes critical here as otherwise the deliberation could slip into becoming a routine and mechanical exercise that does not comprehend the debilitating impact of a health mishap.

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