Open letter to medical consultant doctors
As you would understand through first hand experience many of your
patients are poor or from low/middle income families. They have to seek
your medical attention as the present free medical services are not what
it should be and due to severe congestion. Some of these patients come
from faraway places spending much money on transport to come to
hospitals where your services are made available.
 Some months ago a consultant charged Rs 500 as consultation fees and
the hospital charged about Rs 150 to Rs 200 as their charges. As at
present the consultants fees have been upped to Rs 1,000 and hospital
charges are Rs 300. Many patients and their families have to scrape the
bottom of the barrel and dip into their meagre saving to pay such
charges and to purchase medicines and also take loans or sell whatever
little they have if they have to undergo surgery.
Some consultants see over a hundred patients a day; Mornings,
evenings and even during the lunch break.
One could imagine the money that is collected by these esteemed
consultants for a day.
This is supplemented by surgery as and when necessary which is also a
hefty fee. The writer has no ill feeling towards the earnings of such
consultants but wishes to bring to the attention of such consultants the
pathetic plight that patients have to face to raise funds necessary to
seek private medical care from government paid doctors.
Doctors should tap their conscience and take note of the fact that
they are making enough and more money to keep their families in the lap
of luxury through money charged from a pathetic/suffering lot of
patients who have no alternative but to spend whatever they have saved
for a rainy day or for their old age to live above want and to have
three square meals a day.
I make an appeal to all consultant doctors to give their serious and
kind consideration to this social problem and to reduce their
consultation fees/surgical charges as soon as possible to a reasonable
and affordable amount and to give a special rate to patients who are
over 60 years of age. I am sure that such a kind and meritorious gesture
will not make much of a dent in their additional income and such
reduction in charges will be an example for hospitals too to reduce
their charges.
A thoughtful, sympathetic and kind gesture such as this will earn
doctors who are respected and treated like living gods much love and
affection from many ailing patients and will be a great example to many
who exploit the underprivileged in this country. I earnestly hope that
all kind hearted doctors will be guided by the religions they practice
and also by the preaching's of such great religious leaders and will
take a much more sympathetic attitude towards charges levied from
patients.
- Senior Citizen
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