Valley Chai

when we had a kid emergency in the bay area, we had to almost had barge into our pediatrician’s office with absolutely no appointment. after the boys burnt their legs with hot water, we drove all the way from milpitas to santa clara el camino on old san francisco road - this wasn’t a 911 emergency, so we had to wait for about 2 hours after the burn incident for a doctor to see them and dress the wounds - all this time, boys were crying their lungs out.

we had a similar situation a week ago. tanmay hurt the back of his head while monkeying around with his twin brother. he didn’t look too good, and we called up our neighborhood pediatrician to see her at her home. she was the one we see at the clinic, and she willfully gave us her  home number for emergencies. incidentally her fee is rs.200 - in cash of course.

in 10 minutes were at her home, and she referred to a specialist, and we were off to apollo in about 20min. the 5-mile drive took 30 minutes, and it gets extremely frustrating driving at 5 mph through traffic in an emergency. i wish a 911 existed in bangalore, but it probably wont get the patient to the hospital any quicker. btw, many hospitals run their own emergency service (apollo’s is 1066).

the health care system is still primitive. large software companies provide healthcare benefits, but the hospital networks aren’t well established yet. so you’d almost always have that awkward conversation with doctors and staff about what the fee and payment modalities are. charging directly to insurance is still a new concept, and they even have a proper name for it ‘cashless’. whereas the hmo’s/ppo’s are incentivized to avoid seeing the patients as much as possible, it’s quite the opposite here. they want to see you as many times as possible, and most services take pre-authorization from the insurance agency.

the doctors are well qualified, and in apollo, i found them providing the same level of care as in the u.s. they are just getting around to discussing the healthcare decisions with the patients, and apollo doctors seem to be discovering that it helps patients opt in for more medical services that way.. . also, one of the insiders was telling me that the cost of various tests depends on the type of room you select as an inpatient. the same blood test costs higher if you stay in a costlier ward.

the support staff is a-plenty, and they shoot the breeze generously while the patients are expected to be.. well.. plenty patient. every appointment is pretty much for ‘guidance’ only. the actual time you’d see the doctor depends on when he shows up and how long the line is. fortunately, they have tv’s everywhere and ipl/movie is always on. people seem to be cool with it for the most part.

the only medical records management system that’s in place is a folder that you carry around with you. every little doc /test result /prescription is stuffed in that folder, and it’s your responsibility to  keep them safe and take them with you to the doctor on every visit.

the cleanliness of the premises is pretty good, but not great. getting a meal delivered to the room is excruciating, and the cafeteria has as sparse a menu as i have seen at the lucille packard children’s hospital in palo alto. but hey you can get idli/sambar and a hot egg puff over hot filter coffee.

it’s nice to see banaglore rising in the ranks of health care hubs in south asia. i saw many african in patients. having gone to both the apollo and the wockhardt hospitals (on bannerghetta road near IIM Bangalore), you see why. apollo has a deal with john hopkins and wockhardt has a deal with harvard medical schools.