There has been a mushroom growth in private healthcare facilities in the country. It indicates what a thriving business this area has proved to be. Healthcare at many of these private facilities is no more a service. It has become a new-found way of minting money. If there was no prospect for making money, these facilities might have not sprung up here and there. We have no reason to think that they have ventured into this field only to provide services to the people at reasonable costs. If that was not the case, they would not have the tendency of fleecing the patients in the name of providing services to them.
It will be clear, if an example of what happens in the case of neonatal intensive care is cited here. Once a newborn is taken into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), what remains to do is: just bide your time, because, time is money. As long as the newborn is kept in the NICU, the hospital bill keeps going up, no matter how the newborn is feeling, because it cannot speak. The newborn's life may be at stake. Maybe, the family will turn paupers by paying the hefty bill. But it does not matter to the healthcare facility authorities.
Recently, a woman came to a city healthcare outlet with her newborn grandchild. The newborn was in the NICU at a private hospital on the outskirts of Dhaka. After three or four days the hospital released the baby, because the bill was going up sharply. She paid nearly Tk 1.0 lakh and got the baby released. Then she came to the city hospital to see a doctor. The doctor advised her to keep the baby back in the NICU. Though stunned by the advice, yet she could not defy the doctor. So she complied. The newborn was put on oxygen again. The doctor was doing the regular checkup and giving the updates. The family found themselves in a helpless state, as there was no sign of the newborn getting better. It was not the lone case there. Many others there were facing a similar situation. One guardian of a newborn played a trick. He told the healthcare facility authorities that it was not possible for him to pay the hefty bill and that an NICU seat was booked at a public hospital at a far lower rate. The private hospital first refused to release the baby citing its worsening condition. But on the insistence of the guardian, the private hospital agreed and released the baby on payment of forty thousand in total dues. The baby was still on oxygen. When brought to another hospital, the ward boy there took off the baby's oxygen mask. The guardian reacted angrily: "Why did you take it off?" The ward boy said, "No problem." That made the guardian suspicious. He noticed that the baby was having no problem breathing. Then it was breastfed. Still there was no problem. Now he could understand that the first private hospital just swindled him out of money.
This is how a section of private hospitals are fleecing the patients and minting money. The government has a target to ensure affordable access to healthcare for all by 2032. When we are far off the goal of uinversal healthcare access, the profiteering motive of a section of health service providers is making it difficult to attain the goal. Apart from the exorbitantly high costs of health services, the inexperience of some doctors is also a cause for concern, because it involves the life of a patient. Access to health services is the fundamental right of the people. We cannot afford to take it lightly.
