When 71-year-old Krishna Natrajan of Chembur was told that his heart, already operated upon a decade ago, needed surgery again, he decided to wait for a hi-tech alternative: biodegradable stents.
He waited four months for the launch till December 2012, pooled his medical insurance and his savings and bought four stents. The stents alone cost Rs 12 lakh, but his cardiologist V T Shah believes the cost was worth on two counts: redo heart surgeries are very complex and his patient's recovery took lesser time than a surgery would.
Advanced technological solutions carry a premium tag, but they offer an edge to patients. They translate into quicker exits from dreary hospitals, fewer tears and, mostly, a quicker recovery.
Technology has changed health-care delivery in many ways. Knee-replacement patients literally start walking within 24 hours of surgery. Patients who have half of their stomachs carved out, walk out of hospital within 24 to 36 hours. Most private eye hospitals don't bother with overnight facilities as most of the procedures are done as out-patient procedures. 'Hi-tech has helped better treatments'
Higher Costs Spark Debate, But Most Docs See Advantage
A day after TOI highlighted how insurance companies are receiving higher bills due to toptech surgeries, experts said hi-tech medical solutions offered greater comfort to patients. "Technology has helped us gain perfection. We are close to eliminating human error in orthopaedic surgery," said orthopaedic surgeon Dr Vijay Shetty.
Eye surgeons feel the same. "In the last decade or so, we have managed to reduce the size of the incision for eye surgery to 0.7mm. This is one-seventh of what we did before," said retina surgeon Dr S Natrajan to highlight the contribution of hi-tech to the world of surgery.
Thanks to minimally invasive heart surgery with newly-devised probes and clips, heart surgeon Mahesh Singh said "we can now offer patients supra-heart surgery with the promise to discharge them after two days in hospitals".
Old-timers like Dr Lalit Kapoor, a surgeon and founding member of the Association of Medical Consultants, believe that technology is being overused. "Hi-tech has become an excuse to hike the bill," said the doctor who has been part of many dialogues with insurance companies. "Relatives of patients want to offer the best or they carry guilt. The costs are so high, I wonder how people raise the money," he added.
But senior heart surgeon Dr Ramakanta Panda felt the contribution of technology cannot be underestimated. "Advancements in technology are improving the quality of treatments available. So what looks like an increase in the insurance claim amount could actually be a whole new treatment made available to the patient, or an opportunity to save his life that was not available earlier," he said.
The main issue, he felt, was the initial cost of research on any new technology. "Only if there's wide acceptance of the procedure and usage will the cost get lower," he said.
Insurance companies could use "information therapy" to help patients, felt Aniruddha Malpani, who heads the HELP Library for patients. "It has been researched extensively and accepted that patients don't care if someone else is paying the bill. When they are paying, they will say that they don't want an expensive drug-coated stent and would be happier with bare metal," he said.
A solution for insurance companies against unnecessary splurging on top tech would be to educate buyers about health options. "If a patient runs a check on Google about robotic surgery, which is still comparatively new, he is not likely to find the adverse advice until they reach the fourth or fifth page of the search. If an insurance company offers information to patients on their website or mail such booklets to patients, it would help both the patients and the insurance companies," Malpani added.  |
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