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DEALING WITH YOUR UNPAID PROFESSIONAL BILLS By Dr. Lalit Kapoor © The issue of patients not paying professional charges of doctors and hospitals keeps sticking out like a sore thumb every now and then. Durable solutions for the same seem to be elusive but anecdotal events keep provoking knee-jerk responses, bordering between the unreasonable and bizarre.   The issue came to a boil a couple of years ago. Check out the story. CASE 1 A seriously injured patient, a case of head injury following a metallic object exploding at the factory where he worked, underwent life-saving neurosurgery at a large hospital in Mumbai. He had a fairly good recovery and was fit to be discharged a month later. However, he refused to pay the balance amount of hospital bills amounting to Rs. 1, 93,000/- Instead, he disputed the bill, saying it was excessive, and he had a long list of allegations of negligence against the hospital, doctors, nursing staff, and physiotherapists and so on. He said he wan...
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MEDICAL JOUSTING—FREQUENT CAUSE OF MALPRACTICE LITIGATION By Dr. Lalit Kapoor © Medico-legal liability is now an increasingly challenging reality. Never before in the history of the medical profession in India have we witnessed the kind of hostility and aggression against doctors as is evident today.  Even as I type these lines, there are newspaper reports of ongoing violence against doctors in various parts of the country following Covid deaths. Despite supreme personal sacrifices by doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers, at all times, strangely, the public perception of the medical profession is at its lowest. There seems to be a serious trust deficit in the patient-doctor relationship. This situation can only be compounded by the phenomenon known as medical jousting ----- something that should be consciously and scrupulously avoided. Here are a few illustrations of the nature and repercussions of medical jousting. 🥊 A Gastroenterologist admitted a patient to the ho...
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PATIENT ‘DEAD ON ARRIVAL’ – WHAT NEXT? By Dr. Lalit Kapoor © An unresponsive patient is brought to your clinic, nursing home, or casualty and is on examination found to be dead viz. Dead on Arrival (DOA) In some countries it is  also known as BID – Brought In Dead . The Immediate question that needs to be answered is whether or not you should perform CPR. It is sometimes a dilemma. NOTE **SUSPENDED ANIMATION  Suspended animation : It is also called ‘apparent death’ –a condition which may persist from a few seconds to several minutes after which patient may revive. It may occur in cases of drowning, cerebral concussion, electrocution, in the new born, heat stroke, over dosage by barbiturates, etc. It is this condition which accounts for those cases which are reported in the media sometimes as patient waking up in the crematorium!! The decision to do CPR will depend on the history of the patient –both present and past, and the duration of the condition. For example, if it was...
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