My dad was under treatment at Max Super Speciality Hospital - Saket since Jan, 2007, having been admitted admitted 5-6 times over the past year+ timeframe, with his condition deteriorating every time. He was scheduled for a neuro surgery in February 2008. A day before the surgery a junior resident doctor (at the Neuro Surgery ICU) wished to insert the CVP line at 1:00 am in the morning (CVP line is required to be set up before this operations) - apparently to expedite the operations procedure the next day morning (but no clue why 1:00am in the morning). CVP line is a minor insertative procedure and is a basic one in medical world (does not require much expertise), but needs to be performed in the ICU. But, the hospital goofed up this simple procedure (not expected at a hospital that is of this high stature) and ruptured his left lung (lung cavity), resulting his collapse of his lungs and him getting into a "pneumothorax" condition. As if this goof-up was not enough, the doctors at the ICU took their own sweet time to take appropriate corrective action for reversing the "pneumothorax" situation. In the meantime, while the doctors were still taking their time for corrective action, the oxygen supply to the parts of the body (including brain) was getting lower (as the lung had collapsed) and finally he subsequently slipped into "coma" state. He could never come out of this condition. Finally in the month of March 2008, my father passed away in "coma" condition - this time, after spending more than 2 months at the hospital without any improvement in his condition.

I wonder, that if all this could happen with a patient while he is in an ICU, what can the hospital deliver in the other wards. I definitely hold the hospital somewhat responsible for an untimely death of my father. I lodged complaints with the hospital authorities, but they were not ready to budge on anything. This was one of the severe things that I faced in this hospital, apart from several other incidents of negligence of patient care, while my father was in this hospital.

I am writing to inform you about the sad state of affairs at the Max Balaji Hospitial in IP Extension (East Delhi). We had to

get one of my relatives operated for a medical condition. We were asked by the doctor who was consulting her to be at the

hospital by 7:30 pm to get her admitted into the ward as the operation was scheduled for the next day morning around 8:00 am.
As advised by the doctor we reached the hospital on time where we were asked to get in touch with the reception to get the

admission formalities completed. Upon reaching the reception we were told that there were no rooms available for atleast 3

hours and that too was dependent on one of the patients being discharged. This was a very unpleasant surprise as the

operation had been planned 2 weeks in advance along with the ward room request. The doctors could offer no more help other

than telling us to wait near the reception and hope that we get the ward quickly. It was also suggested that we keep

reminding the Reception to process our request lest they should forget.

At the reception we were asked to start the admission formalities while we were waiting for one of the rooms to be vacated.

What surprised me the most was that the Billing / Registration Department was very quick in charging the entire expected

amount of the expenses without even bothering to check whether a room was available for the patient to get admitted. When we

asked them to inform us as soon as the room would be vacated we were told that this information will not be available to them

and it is best that we go to the ward itself and find out from the nurse when the room would be vacated. It took repeated

visits to the ward to determine that the room alloted to us had been finally vacated by the previous patient. When we

informed the Registration Department around 10:15 pm that the room had been vacated we were told that it will take about half

an hour to clean the room.

We patiently waited near the Reception area till the room was cleaned. After waiting for an hour when we asked the

Registration officer whether we could shift the patient we were told to check the room to determine whether it had been

cleaned. When we went to the ward we were appalled to find that nothing had been done after the previous patient had left. We

got hold of the cleaner and paid him some money and got the room cleaned in our presence. By the time we shifted the patient

it was around 12:00 am only to find that the attached bathroom had still not been cleaned. It was around 1:00 am that the

room was finally in some state of decency for occupation.

Throughout our ordeal we were offered little assistance from any of the hospital staff. We were told that each department has

its own incharge and its difficult to coordinate between the departments. Also there was no duty manager available to whom we

could voice our grievance.

The irony of the entire episode is that each wall had a caption in bold stating "The patient comes first... Always". The

only way I would complete the statement is "The patient comes first and the services come last. Always".