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Madan Mitra takes up cudgel against private hospital after Mamata's warning

Didi gave a stern warning to private hospitals and asked them to be more humane.

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Mamata Banerjee
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Within 48 hours of Chief Minister’s stern warning to different private hospitals that they should be more humane while treating patients, a visibly irritated TMC leader Madan Mitra talked to the authorities of Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals following a complaint of negligence of hospital authorities leading to the death of a patient Sanjay Roy.

Talking to the COO of the hospital Rana Dasgupta, Mitra said, “After the massive meeting and final warning by the CM, it seems you have not paid any heed. Have you become the ruler of Bengal?” Referring to Rupali Basu, the CEO of the hospital he said that she always threatened to shut down the hospital and leave the state. “Tell her she can shut down and leave. We don’t mind. It is better for this hospital to leave than run such an expensive crematorium here,” Mitra said talking to Dasgupta over the phone and asked him to refund all the money to the Roy’s family.

Roy, a resident of Dankuni in Hooghly district in Bengal, had met with an accident on February 16 at 11 am and had been admitted to the hospital at 2.10 pm with injuries on his chest and stomach. Family members of Roy said that hospital authorities had said that he had fractured ribs and an injury in his liver because of which he would need a CT scan and a surgery. “He was also kept under ventilation and doctors said he was almost out of danger. The bill escalated to over Rs 7 lakh till yesterday when we decided we will have to shift him to the state-run SSKM hospital, owing to financial constraints. Through the intervention of TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee, we managed to secure a bed and wanted to get him discharged but hospital authorities refused to let go of him unless the entire bill was cleared,” said a family member of the deceased.

It has been alleged that the total bill amount was Rs 7,23,000 and in spite of Roy’s family having already paid Rs 4,33,000, hospital authorities had not only taken a post-dated cheque from them, they had also pressurised the family to submit a fixed deposit certificate, sign a promissory note and asked them to keep their property papers and jewellery as security before Roy was released.

Roy was taken to SSKM at about 9.30 pm yesterday where he died after sometime. The state health department officials said that they were looking in to the incident. “A report has been sought from Apollo Hospitals and once we have received it we can look into the areas where the hospital had faltered and take action against them,” said a state health official. The department is already in touch with Roy’s family.

Authorities of the hospital, however, denied any negligence or pressurising Roy’s family. “Roy had to be kept under ventilation and CT scan had to be done out of necessity,” said Dr Partha Bhattacharya, medical superintendent of the hospital. Dr Joy Basu, COO of the hospital admitted that they had accepted a fixed deposit certificate but maintained that it was given to them by Roy’s family willingly. “We had only asked for a promissory note and a post-dated cheque which we know are not legally bound. The family members, on their own had kept the fixed deposit certificates with us. No property papers or jewellery, however, had been demanded,” Basu said. He also said that the hospital, upon receiving telephone calls from senior officials they had decided that they would refund all the money that Roy’s family had paid so far.

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