Musings Own Thoughts

Charitable trust Hospitals in India and Mumbai are loosely defined as hospitals registered under the Bombay Public Trust Act of 1950 which governs all non profits and are answerable to the Charity Commissioner. A majority hospitals fell under two categories, the public hospitals run by the state and central governments and in some cities by the local municipal corporations and the private hospitals run by charitable trusts for providing medical relief to society at large. There are only a handful of hospitals which are purely profit driven hospitals and run as business houses for profit. The Association of Hospitals has been established to create a collective voice to represent the charitable or non profit hospitals. Non profit hospitals are not literally loss making units but include successful and profitable units which plough back their profits into sustenance, advancement and expansion of scope and services. Historically hospitals and health care originated from temples and re...

Relationships in general rest on universal values of trust honesty and mutual respect. So why does society at large give a special place to this relationship? Let me illustrate this by the reaction of both doctors and patients to an event which took place a few decades back. A bench of the Supreme court in 1995 when considering a case of medical negligence tried under the Consumer Protection act of 1986 , upheld the right of the patient to use this mechanism of redress. Thus in one stroke this resulted in changing the hitherto sacred relationship of unconditional give and take into a transactional relationship of a consumer and a provider of service. This was met with howls of protest by the traditional doctors who felt that a relationship wherein questions of life and death were involved could not be merely equated to any purchase or sale of service. To rub salt into the wound, the services given free of cost did not come under the purview of this law. Lots of do...