An orthopaedic hospital provides infertility treatment in a not-so-visible room, while a gynaecologist has just a huge table in the delivery room, sans the emergency medicines. Another nursing home has no labour room, an essential prerequisite between the casualty ward and the operation theatre. A tiny clinic announces free treatment under ‘Arogyasri,’ but ‘outsources’ the patient to another empanelled hospital.
These are some of the ways the self-styled multi speciality hospitals in Tirupati are taking the patients for a ride and the administration for granted. Leave alone the maverick ‘marketing’ practices, there are several hospitals that have not even registered with the Medical and Health Department.
Health official booed
As per records, there are 297 registered hospitals in Chittoor district, a majority of which are located in Tirupati city. Similarly, there are 184 ultrasound scanning centres in the district, of which 165 are in the private sector alone. The real on-ground figures are anybody’s guess. An inspection by the District Medical and Health Officer S. Vijaya Gowri to the various hospitals in Tirupati was met with stiff resistance. When she insisted on the provisions and infrastructure facilities as mandated by the law, even senior medical practitioners openly expressed their displeasure and booed her. That did not deter her from seizing an ultrasound scanner from a hospital, which was running past its expiry date and removing the ‘Arogyasri’ board from a non-empanelled hospital.
“The hospitals need to inform the government about notifiable developments such as spread of communicable diseases etc. Many hospitals are not doing even that,” she told The Hindu . Pathetically enough, there are some which do not attach significance to registration of births at their premises, which is actually a national policy.
District Collector Siddharth Jain, who recently held a meeting with the private nursing homes and members of the Indian Medical Association’s (IMA) Tirupati chapter, made it clear that the unregistered hospitals would not be allowed to function any more.
