Touch of Compassion

The changing environmental settings, our present-day food habits, changing lifestyles and other various factors have increased the concentration of rampant diseases worldwide and taught us more about the significance of the proverb ‘health is wealth’. It is a blessing to be healthy. The healthcare system thus plays a predominant role globally in achieving healthy living and prevention and cure of various diseases. The brilliant role all healthcare professionals have been playing in managing and combating several diseases including COVID successfully in a country like India with such a huge populace is praiseworthy.

However, there are times the healthcare framework at places and at times does not positively fulfil its objectives. We get to hear instances like a patient has been charged for medical or non-medical items unjustifiably, a person having undergone a test without the need for the same, a patient being moved to the critical or intensive care unit at the first instance without trying to combat the case with other modes of treatment or in a worst-case scenario an individual is kept in ventilation for long after he has actually passed away. There are instances where more than the ailment the insurance coverage the patient is having is primarily of more focus and importance in certain healthcare centres.

A person whose relative is admitted to a hospital for some serious ailment is naturally expected to be too unsettled. Additionally, there are worries about managing several out-of-pocket expenses which may or may not be reimbursed in future. I have seen cases where the family members faced a serious plight as they strive to give the best treatment to their near and dear ones but got mentally and physically strained to arrange for the hefty bills that rose substantially each day. There are cases where consultation fees, consumables and medical tests are charged arbitrarily. There are times when common men are denied treatment in a critical scenario and they have to seek assistance from influential persons to get the same. There is a spree at places too to admit persons in healthcare centres and then offer treatment which could be done otherwise. Again, instances are not rare where quality care is not extended to the patients despite charging heavily for the same and they lay in hospitals helplessly.

Medicine prices are escalating day by day. With the increased demand for insurance, the insurance companies on the other hand are modifying their framework of extending coverage to people with more stringent stipulations imposed. Healthcare professionals are considered as God for the service they extend to us. We understand that their services are too demanding and onerous. Still, it is imperative that they sincerely respond to all seeking help from them to the best of their capabilities as that is what they have pledged to assist people with.

While profit is important for a private entity to sustain and extend their services continuously, for a crucial sector like this there is more beyond profit as it is to do with human care and lives. Again, while government hospitals have improved to a substantial extent in recent years with the form, nature and diversity of services they are extending to our society, we still look for more efficacy and empathy in line with the contemporary scenario and the huge number of people they cater to.

To conclude, we hereby seek that the overall healthcare system should be extremely empathetic and caring towards the feelings, apprehensions and sufferings of individuals. Organisations should put in place adequate measures that ensure the sanctity of their deliverables with an elevated level of compassion towards all sections of society. It would be unfair to generalise the whole system to be commercially driven without any moral obligation towards the community as the core ethos still benefits our society and the world at large.

The writer is Assistant Professor – Finance, International Management Institute, Kolkata. Views expressed are personal