Rajahmundry: Private doctors are flouting all norms and fleecing patients with hefty charges for varied services like consultation, lab test, pharmacy and other services as the law enforcing authorities remain spectators in East Godavari.
The doctors are charging consultation fee ranging from Rs 200 to Rs 500 and above per patient and its validity varies from a week to two weeks and above. The moment a patient arrives to the hospital, the doctor prescribes a series of tests and they are to be conducted at the lab attached to the hospital.
Based on symptoms of patients and test reports, the doctor prescribes several medicines scribbled illegibly on a sheet of paper and they will be available only at the pharmacy attached to the hospital. Some hospitals will be having a huge rush of patients while in others, the doctors remain idle with a very few patients. The doctors are enhancing consultation fee based on demand.
Patients are getting attracted to the big hospitals where more number of patients are seen, waiting for a long time, instead of finding out the academic qualifications, experience and success rate of the doctors, before visiting their hospitals .
The consultant doctors are employing junior doctors who are having their medical graduation degree from foreign countries like Russia while some are MBBS degree holders from the country. Though there is a norm that foreign medical graduates are supposed to clear the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination being held by National Board of Examinations under the direction of Medical Council of India to practice medicine in India, the consultant physician or surgeon are engaging medical graduates from mainly Russia even if they failed to clear screening test by paying them less wages.
Several hospitals in the city are adopting the same practice in violation of the norms blatantly. As the patient is supposed to visit the junior doctors at the first instance and explain their health issues, they will prepare a report and send the patient to the consultant who in turn prescribes medicines.
In case the junior doctor fails to understand health issues explained by the patient properly, the consultant doctor will give wrong treatment. There were instances where a single consultant physician attended to 120 patients under Aarogya Sri scheme in a day.
