Diagnostic racket: Tata hospital plans to rope in pvt labs to cut waiting period
Senior doctors held a meeting last week to find ways to address the issue of unauthorised activities when the suggestion of tying up with local laboratories came up. The hospital will tie-up such centres that agree to do the testing at the same concessional rates as the hospital.
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A total of 21 hospital staffers have been booked, of which 11 were arrested. Days after doctors from Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) exposed a diagnostic racket involving 21 staffers, the hospital now plans to tie up with local private diagnostic centres and laboratories for patients to take diagnostic tests at concessional rates. The aim is to reduce the waiting period for tests and prevent unlawful activities.
Senior doctors held a meeting last week to find ways to address the issue of unauthorised activities when the suggestion of tying up with local laboratories came up. The hospital will tie-up such centres that agree to do the testing at the same concessional rates as the hospital.
TMH director Dr CS Pramesh said, “There is a tentative plan to empanel high quality scan centres at the same costs as TMH. It will benefit patients, especially from poor-economic background. But it will have to go through a formal tendering process and will not be immediate.”
The TMH, one of the biggest cancer hospitals in India, receives patients from across the country. The hospital records around 82,000 new patients annually with over five lakh follow-up patients. This also overburdens the diagnostic machineries. Daily, the hospital receives over 500 and 300 prescriptions for MRI and CT scans respectively, but the hospital can only perform half of the tests. Despite having two MRI and two CT scan machines, there is a long waiting list of non-emergency patients.
“The families often fear that delay in testing would spread the cancer. Even though we try to accommodate emergency patients, we fail to provide the appointments to many. This makes the needy patients the easy targets for exploitation,” said a senior doctor from the hospital.
Recently, police arrested 21 staffers from the hospital for allegedly referring poor patients to a Parel-based private lab for various tests such as MRI, CT-Scan, X-Ray, PET Scan and 2D Echo in favour of commissions.
“The accused employees would keep watch on patients coming to meet doctors and would misguide them by saying that those tests would take a long time in the hospital or machines were shut. They would then convince patients and their relatives to take those tests done in a private lab,” a police officer had told The Indian Express.
The investigation revealed that the accused staffers would then send patient details to the lab manager on WhatsApp and later get commissions from them every week. A total of 21 hospital staffers have been booked, of which 11 were arrested.
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