Fortis Hospital
My long-held belief that there’s more than one way to deliver good medicine was confirmed when Leslie spent three days at a Fortis Escort hospital in Jaipur while shaking off a stomach bug. She was admitted there after awakening sick at our hotel, which called a cab to take her to see a doctor at 8 Sunday morning in an examining room adjacent to her house. He decided she was dehydrated and put us back in the cab for the trip to the hospital where he had greased her admission. On the way out he gave me his hand-written notes, which concluded with his bill for 500 rupees (a bit more than $10 US).
The hospital emergency room was sparse. There was virtually no high-tech equipment in view and the beds were simple non-electric models. A doctor there confirmed her diagnosis while I dealt with the paperwork and promised to pay the bill (on a Sunday morning, no one had any expertise on whether American insurance will pay) and was asked to pay 50 rupee fee for the paperwork, which was just that. Not much computerization. She was assigned a superdeluxe room with an extra bed for an attendant (me) on a floor largely populated by very young kids. I think her admission increased the median age on her floor by about four decades.
In the emergency room they fitted her with an IV drip to rehydrate her and administer antibiotics. It was a simple tree, far from the wheeled electric devices common in American hospitals, that was inserted in the bed frame. That meant each time she had to go to the bathroom, which was not infrequently, she had to phone a nurse (the call bells appeared inoperative) to disconnect her drip. Then the nurse had to make an encore appearance to restart it.
Surprisingly, this system worked quite well. It seldom took more than two minutes for the nurse to arrive and they were frequently visiting for other purposes—taking vital signs, administering pills, asking her to leave samples. There were also visits from the patient care people, the dietician and six meals a day (morning and afternoon tea as well as soup complementing the usual three). The food wasn’t great, but hospital food seldom is and the fact that the kitchen was vegetarian didn’t make things a lot better.
Her attending physician, a GI specialist, visited at least daily and often brought a consultant along. Which is to say there were a lot of people in and out of that room without even itemizing the cleaners who mopped and changed the bed at least daily. The day nurses worked six hour shifts while the night nurse worked from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Everyone’s English (including ours) was at least adequate.
Three days later she was discharged, given a bunch of pills to take to continue the healing process and a big folder that included her case records and comprehensible summaries of all the tests that had been done (blood, urine, etc). I also got an itemized bill that included every pill administered and every IV line replaced, which must have been a chore for them because they don’t use bar codes or any comparable inventory system.
The bill for three days was in the neighborhood of $500, an amount that would have been exceeded in any American hospital I’m familiar with before she left the emergency room. There were a lot of people, all of whom appeared to be quite caring and competent, and little machinery in view. We’re happy with a staff that treated her so well – while constantly asking how they could do better.
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