Sir,

The corporate culture in healthcare driven by MBAs and venture capitalists running corporate health care as ‘wealth management’ has brought about serious issues with patient-doctor relationship and mistrust.

The venture capitalists’ only goal is to sell and make money, so they drive the doctors to perform more and more to make the numbers good on books and exit just like one manages the share market.

Doctors for their skill and experience are paid a fraction. All was fine till about the year 2000.  Expensive diagnostic tests, advanced procedures came in; Doctors trained hard to get great results but cost of healthcare became high as running cost became high. It is here the fine balance was lost.

Heavy custom duties, heavy interest rate, inflation, dipping Indian ₹ versus $, increased HR costs, land and infrastructure costs brought in the MBAs to manage Hospitals. They are trained to work on numbers, they moved from need to greed to achieve higher targets. This is the final death nail — healthcare became a luxury.

The government failed here miserably to adapt to the fast changes in healthcare, dismal percent spent on government health. A regular smooth transition did not happen. This helped the government hijack the private health care.

Don’t blame the doctors for everything and anything. In this stressful job, it becomes still worse if one has to balance his treatment and the fear of legal action during critical period of treatment.

Just like all need good doctors we also want to treat patients and make them feel good.

– Dr. S.N. Rajeshwar, Radiologist , Yadavagiri, 28.11.2017

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