Do Mysore’s doctors, hospitals have any ethics?
Or were the rules of medicine changed while you were sleeping?
Originally, this post was prompted by Nagu’s observation that the current edition of the Mysore Yellow Pages is actually on white paper.
(Question: are yellow pages on white pages still yellow pages?)
Never mind, but a random glance at the doctors’ section of the yellow pages on white paper shows something more distressing.
Our doctors and hospitals are not merely announcing their presence but advertising their services unabashedly. One of them, Dr C. Sharath Kumar, who runs a fertility centre (or an infertility centre depending on who you are) actually has six, yes six, display advertisements besides the mandatory three-line entry most doctors get.
Display advertisements, not entries.
It appears under: 1) fertility specialists, 2) gynaecologists and obstetricians, 3) infertility specialists, 4) laporoscopic and endoscopic surgeons, 5) surgeons, and 6) hospitals.
If you read this in conjunction with the press releases and advertisements that Dr Sharath Kumar’s “well-wishers” insert in the local papers whenever he is going abroad for (or returning from) some major (or minor) seminar, which is quite frequently, it doesn’t seem a coincidence.
Actually, Dr Sharath Kumar isn’t alone.
Surrogate advertising is now the norm. And a far cry from the days when Dr Shreeram Lagoo was stripped of medical license for using his “Dr” while modeling for Saridon.
As competition catches on, medical advertising is taking on different, more questionable forms.
Super-speciality hospitals which have invested crores are now using every trick in the book (and some outside it) to woo “customers”.
On the cable channels, it is now common to find doctors and surgeons holding forth most eloquently on Sunday afternoons with their phone numbers and hospital/clinic name flashing on the screen.
In the newspapers, it is routine to find free cancer screening camps to get some free publicity, so that the patients can be milked at leisure at the speciality hospitals.
And, it seems, there are no angels left.
Not only are tourists and travelers entering Mysore welcomed by giant hoardings of Vikram Hospital as if it were a hotel, it is also surreptitiously using ‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ to advertise its presence.
And both Vikram and Apollo Hospitals have begun to exploit the naivete of newspapers correspondents and the financial vulnerability of their publications to advertise every little operation conducted in their premises as a world first.
Is this OK? Or is this OK?
Join the debate.
If these very same hospitals don’t tell us what operations they are performing, we will continue to go to metros for our treatment and meteing out twice the price that we may pay here. Hospital bills,stay, food and transportation in the metros, my friend is not cheap. I think instead of being satirical about these hospitals we should also see what they have given to the society of Mysore.
The affordability of healthcare at our doorstep. The choice of treatment right here at our hometown. I think instead of trying to discourage such institutions by commenting on them we should be patting them on the back.
I think that advertising their facilities is no crime. It is a crime if they are not delivering what they have promised.
About the drunken driving posters, public awareness promoted by the hospital will definitely carry more weight. I think we should ask the traffic police how these posters have affected the ratio?
i happen to agree with prithvi, about 10 yrs back my mother -in-law was very sick, and had to have dialysis and we had to take her to bangalore at Manipal Hospital for treatment.Not only did we have to rent out a house for this purpose, but had a lot of problems as it was not a place we were very familiar with. And of course though the treatment was good we had to keep going back for follow up. Later on even when we were able to treat her in Mysore, fixing an ambulance to transfer her to the Hospital (B M Hospital) was a major procedure. She was bed ridden, and had to be taken in an ambulance for her dialysis procedure once in 2 days. The concerned hospital would not provide this service and we had to keep calling Ambulance services and KR Hospital etc. Over all a painful experience, as compared to last year when my Father-in-law was admitted at Vikram Hospital. Fact was it is the best in Mysore, and had all the facilities and was closer home. And they provided the best patient care, even compared to Manipal in bangalore.
I don’t think any of us cares if any hospital advertises or not, as long as they provide the best of patient care. hospitals in Bangalore like Wockhart and Narayana Hrudayalaya also advertise thru traffic islands. Nothing wrong as long as they are not breaking the law. What better than hospitals issuing public intrest ads, at least people will pay heed to them then.
Dont sit on your high horse and judge them, at least they are providing us poor mysoreans a chance to protect our lives at cheaper rates. We who have had experiences in these hospitals can actually tell u if they are providing us with good patient care. And proxy advertising is the fact of the day. There are ignorant people who still go out of town for treatment basically because they ar not aware of the facilities provided. If the hospitals are educating us about the same more power to them.
I believe a philosophy is being perpetuated that these “doctors” are making the medical fraternity look like a bunch of car salesmen or being desprate for patients.
20 years ago just being a doctor guaranteed you a certain amount of success but now times are changing, we live in a competitive world where advertising plays a significant role.
i honestly think there’s nothing wrong in letting the world know what you have to offer. doctors do have to make a living you know, the same way everyone else does. and like everyone else even the doctor is looking for any edge to make more money. doctors cant put a roof over their head with just courteousness you know.
Just making more money for compromised treatment is undoubtedly unethical but just advertising isn’t.
Does advertising make him a bad doctor?… Let his patients be the judge of that.