Indian Politics: Why IMA dazed with PM Modi remarks (so-called)?

Truth has honored with PM Modi’s so-called remark that pharma companies should refrain from bribing doctors with escorts, gifts and foreign trips. Interestingly, as soon as this news aired in the media, IMA asked PM to prove, deny or apologize for his statement. It didn’t wait for PM or PMO clarification on this.

This is what we say “Guilty conscience pricks the mind.”

Everyone knows the truth. But Sir ‘Life is precious’ and doctors are next to God so lips are sewn. Now, you are the ‘GOD’ of India but don’t try to be the ‘GOD KING’. Just go out and see how India is changing rapidly. Means of living are saturating. The country is trying to fill up the deep pits made in those dark years.

We know how healthcare nexus is working –

This ringed link is self-explanatory. Everyone falling in this cycle is attached to each other in some ways. This is not wicked to form a nexus for commercial benefits but it becomes unacceptable when people get affected.

Let us see some tweets here-

These tweets are revealing the deep-rooted association between government, administration, and healthcare professionals.

IMA is saying to give proofs as to how doctors are bribed?

Now, who has not seen the inverters, LEDs and other electronic devices gifted by medical professionals to doctors? The doctor chambers are full of those sophisticated gadgets, and mobile phones are a very common gifting item.

Yes, people are busy in earning bread and butter so they don’t care about cars, villas and foreign trips, and also escorts are cheaper than a mobile.

To make a new India, this entire practice should be destroyed.

What others are saying-

“In May 2014, David Berger wrote in The BMJ about his experience at a rural hospital in India that revealed to him widespread the corruption that afflicts the health system. Reflecting on the practice of cash for referrals, Berger shared, "The country’s doctors and medical institutions live in an ‘unvirtuous circle’ of referral and kickback that poisons their integrity and destroys any chance of a trusting relationship with their patients. Given these practices, it is no surprise that investigations and procedures are abused as a means of milking patients.”

                                                     

                                                                           -   Courtesy, BMJ

“What are the forms of corruption in healthcare and medicine?

The problem of corruption in healthcare is of a multidimensional nature. Corruption may be involved, for example, in the construction of health centers/hospitals, purchase of instruments, the supply of medicines and goods, overbilling in insurance claims and even appointment of healthcare professionals. Another aspect of the problem is the involvement of multiple parties, e.g. policy-makers, ministers, economists, engineers, contractors, suppliers, and doctors. All this may give rise to innumerable clandestine transactions of a corrupt nature among various stakeholders.

Forms of corruption in healthcare and medicine may include, but not be limited to, the following (1, 3, 5):

• Bribes and kickbacks:

Characterized as hallmarks of corruption, bribes and kickbacks can be paid by individuals and firms to (i) procure government contracts, leases or licenses for the construction of healthcare facilities, and for the supply of medicines, goods, and services, as well as ensure the terms of their contracts; (ii) prefix and ‘rig’ the bidding process; (iii) manipulate and falsify records, and modify ‘evidence’ to give the appearance of its being in compliance with the norms of regulatory agencies; (iv) speed up the procedure of permission to carry out legal activities, eg obtaining institutional affiliation, company registration or construction permits; and (v) influence or change legal outcomes so as to avoid punishment for wrong-doing (3, 5).

• Theft and embezzlement:

This may occur as theft of public assets and goods, such as instruments and medicines, by individuals for sale, personal use or use in for-profit private clinics. The theft of government revenues, such as patient registration fees and the payment of salary to deceased or “ghost” workers are other forms of corruption (3, 5).

• Intentional damage to public goods for private gain:

Public assets and instruments in government hospitals may also be intentionally damaged so as to make them unavailable to patients, with the ultimate aim of ordering the services from private clinics in return for financial incentives or “commission.”

• Absenteeism:

Perceived somewhat less often as a form of corruption, absenteeism (not attending work but claiming salary) in the health sector has been a major concern in some developing countries (5).

• Informal payments:

In some countries, patients commonly make informal payments to healthcare professionals for better services. The imposition of such a “tax” on “free” healthcare services has a negative impact on access to health services (5).

• Use of human subjects for financial gain:

Clinical researchers get paid by the biomedical industry for the recruitment of poor and illiterate, ie vulnerable, human subjects for clinical trials (9). Another way in which hospitals and physicians use patients is by charging uninsured patients and patients with other health plans far more than the actual costs involved and what the health insurers pay.

• Institutionalized potential corruption:

In some for-profit hospitals, physicians have contractual obligations to admit a fixed number of patients to allotted beds and prescribe a number of laboratory investigations (even if unnecessary) to generate revenues.

Whatever the form, corruption has far-reaching consequences on patient care, clinical research, and medical education.”

-          Courtesy, IJME