DNA EXCLUSIVE: Racket exposed as AAP Minister's patient cheated at top city hospital

A patient referred by AAP Minister Imran Hussain to GB Pant Hospital — the Delhi government’s biggest and only super-speciality medical facility — for a bypass surgery has blown the lid off large-scale corruption.   

The patient was cheated by a tout who charged Rs 1.25 lakh for the surgery that is free in Delhi government as well as private hospitals, DNA’s investigations have revealed.

The patient was cheated by a tout who charged Rs 1.25 lakh for the surgery that is free in Delhi government as well as private hospitals.

A committee was formed in December to conduct a preliminary inquiry after Hussain flagged the case to Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain. The panel’s report has highlighted severe loopholes in the hospital’s functioning. 

The patient, Aslam, underwent the surgery in two weeks. The normal waiting time is a year. The 714-bed hospital offers super-specialty treatment to about 3 lakh patients in its out-patient department every year. The annual number of patients in general and private wards is 15,000. 

“We are aware of the matter and further investigations are going on,” said Delhi Health Secretary Rajeev Yaduvanshi. 

In September, the patient visited the hospital, and as per allegations, he was operated out of turn by Dr Subodh Satyarthi. The committee checked the entire operation theatre list of doctors to investigate the case further. 

“It was found that patients who could not be operated on a particular day were not preferred in the next list but new cases were added. Random surgery sheets showed that some cases took only five days to be taken up, while others took much longer,” said one of the doctors. 

“It can be safely concluded that surgeries have been done out of turn and artificial waiting lists created,” the report said. “Some pages had only numbers but no names of any patients against the numbers.” 

To verify further, the committee examined the case sheet of operated patients of bypass surgeries done by Dr Satyarthi and analyzed them from the date of OPD slip made, admission and surgery. “It clearly established that claimed waiting period by Dr Satyarthi for his surgery is not consistent. This means that actual surgery has been done in few days and weeks. No reason for emergency/out of turn surgery has been recorded in the file. It can be safely concluded that surgeries has been done out of turn and artifical waiting list has been created, a trend which has also been confirmed by the HOD of CTVS,” the committee report concluded. 

While scrutinizing the OPD register as to see as to whether any reference of the person who got Aslam admitted has been mentioned, the committee found that there was another patient’s name mentioned with the same OPD card. 

“Therefore, irregularity was noticed and it required clarification. One of the two cards have been fake. The reply was sought from the OPD-in charge who confirmed that the card issued to Aslam was fake,” the report said. 

The committee held its meeting on December 12 last year and examined the OPD register for three months--August, September and October. As per the reports, the OPD register for CTVS cases was found to have incomplete entries. “Some pages had only numbers but no names of any patients against the numbers. There was no system of taking addresses and other details against the names of the patients,” the committee said in its observations. 

According to the sources, the head of the department earlier in 2016 had shown suspicion about the concerned doctor and was aware about touts operating in the hospital. “He had mentioned in the some names of officials who were allegedly involved in the case. He had provided names of seven faculty members which were allegedly involved in this business,” said a senior doctor from the hospital. 

The Delhi government has already planned to reserve 50 per cent of the beds in the hospital for Delhi residents.