Expectations of Indian patients, from their doctors – a personal perspective
If someone ask me about my “expectation from a doctor”, the answer would be: I expect a doctor to be compassionate, capable of diagnosing the problem correctly, and curing the medical issue within a very reasonable time, but within a reasonable cost…
But wen I asked the same question to a few of my friends; I got varying answers from most of them.
While some expect their doctor to be highly skilled with a very good reputation in the profession, some expect their doctor to respect the patient, and not someone who just check and prescribe the medicines.
However, when it comes to those from rural India, where you won’t find many private health facilities, the people generally don’t keep any such expectations, but have to anyways depend on the free Government health system, within their locality.
While poor people are generally depending on free government healthcare facilities, middle class people mostly depend upon stand-alone clinics or small to medium size private hospitals. However, with a large spread of such private clinics / hospitals now available even in villages, general public definitely have few options to make of the hospital as well as the doctor. When it comes to a clinic or individually owned small hospital, the reputation of the doctor (s) is the most important element that will be considered. Even though it take many years to build-up a good professional reputation, just a bad incident or a fake propaganda can wipe-out such reputation within no time!
Stand-alone clinics and small hospitals, who generally can’t afford big advertisement budgets, mainly depends on reference of their satisfied patient, for the success of their business. A happy patient can easily become a loyal customer, generating further leads and improving the client base. Afterall, the bottom line of any business is depending upon their net-work and the size of their satisfied customers.
When it comes to medium to large hospital, people basically check on: their overall credibility, how long the facility is operating, what all modern equipment and diagnosing system they have, what is the spread of speciality doctors, and most importantly how costly or affordable they are! Of course, the reputation of the management, as well as the individual doctors associated with them, matters a lot in this respect.
With the spread of multi-speciality hospitals, the overall healthcare system has gone through such a tremendous change in recent years, in almost all the cities in India now, both in diagnosing and treating the patients. But in a developing country like India, only a small percentage of the population can still afford such facilities. The current trend of Optimizing the use of modern equipment and Maximising the ROI (Return On Investment) has somehow created an element of doubt in the mind of general public. The influence of big pharma companies on such hospitals / doctors is also a cause of concern to the public.
Till recent years, the benefits of medical insurance were mostly enjoyed by government and big corporate employees. In addition to this, only a small percentage of the population, basically those high-income individuals or highly rich families, used to opt for personal / family medical insurances. However, with the ever-increasing cost of health care and medical treatments, even middle-income common people have also started to opt for some kind of medical insurance now a days, within their affordable level. With many providers in the market, and the increased publicity of medical insurance policies has prompted many common people also to go for it. Since there are many private players in this business, an element of caution is definitely required before you opt for your provider. Even though such policies will definitely come to your help, in case of a major sickness and hospitalization, people started to complaint about a trend in the industry, about prescribing costly tests and treatment for patients, based on their medical insurance policies! Which is definitely something the doctors & hospitals have to correct, if they are true to their professional ethics.
In conclusion, I must say that there are, if not many but few important elements, that a patient expects from his/her doctor: Friendly and ethical behaviour, fast diagnosing with minimum tests, faster cure / recovery, within an affordable overall cost. If all these are made possible through a single window, patients will be really happy, and their positive reference can hugely influence the reputation of the doctor / hospital, leading the facility to be a profitable one.
The above article is mainly based on the writer’s personal experiences and the limited understanding of the current healthcare facilities in India.
Sudha