Ambani Hospital: The Good Samaritan of the highway

Rita Dutta - Raigad

That the private sector is not interested in investing in Emergency Medical Service (EMS) because of it being a non-profitable venture, not to talk about the mundane medico-legal hassles, is a reality. An exception is the Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, located in Raigad district of Maharashtra which has a dedicated EMS service being run gratis for most of the time. It is believed that the late Dhirubhai Ambani chose to build a hospital off the highway, because of it being a high accident prone zone.

The hospital has a well-equipped ambulatory service, armed with medical and para-medical staff, which rushes to the spot of the accident within a few minutes. They rescue the accident victims, administer first-aid and transfer the victims to the hospital if needed. The hospital has a dedicated unit for EMS- a casualty room, burns room and well-equipped OT.

The hospital treats around 10 EMS cases a day. Once in a major bus accident, the hospital has treated 125 victims. The survival rate of the patient is also an unbelievable 90 per cent. So far, the hospital claims to have treated more than 2,000 accident victims.

Says Col SKP Matwankar, medical director, “As all accident cases have to be reported, most of the time we take the trouble of lodging a first information report with the police.”

The Dhirubhai Ambani hospital at Lodhivali; Inset: A state of the art ambulance of the hospital

The hospital does not check if a patient can pay or not. “The administration lives by the wish of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, who during the inauguration of the hospital said, “Saving a human life is equivalent to Rs 1 crore.” The hospital has laid down protocols to be followed for the different kinds of emergencies, whether it is burns, hit-and-run case or poisoning. “Following standard norms of treatment removes confusion,” says Matwankar. But what according to him makes the EMS facility of the hospital stand out is the involvement of the hospital administration. The hospital takes the initiative in tracing the family of the patient from his belongings, a job which other hospitals might just leave for the police.

Says A Mahajan, EMS co-ordinator, “We search the belongings of the patient to get the phone book. Then our staff starts calling up these numbers randomly to trace the family of the patient.” In the meantime, the EMS team starts treating the patient. And while other private hospitals necessarily take the consent of the family before conducting the surgery, here the doctors conduct emergency surgeries, even in the absence of the relatives of the patient.

Says Lt Col Shiv Shankar, Joint Director and Senior Consultant Anaesthesiology, “Saving a life is more important than the going through the formalities. We conduct the surgery in good faith. Under law, a doctor can perform surgery without taking the permission of the patient’s relatives.”

But are they troubled by the police? “The police understands our good intentions. Luckily, they have not harassed us,” replies Matwankar.

A patient can continue his treatment in the hospital or be shifted to another hospital, as per the wish of the relatives. The hospital has never refused treatment to anybody. Once an accident-hit victim was recuperating in the hospital for more than a month, before the patient’s relatives could arrive from Assam.

“If a patient is in a position to pay, he pays, but then the patient is not under any obligation to pay. Some relatives even say that they would come back and pay, but 90 per cent of these people do not. Anyway, payment is not what we are looking at,” says Mahajan. The EMS staff documents the belongings of the patients, keeps them safely and returns it to the patent when he recovers. Says Dr A K Sinha, deputy director, medical, “Till date there has been no theft of the belongings of the patient. Once we had to keep gold ornaments of a girl lying in the ICU for a fortnight.”

While authorities of other hospitals are thinking of means of making EMS profitable, for Dhirubhai Ambani hospital it purely a social venture. As summed by A G Dawda, president, Reliance Engineering Associate Private Limited, “Our interest in healthcare is to make healthcare affordable to more number of people. And the EMS of Dhirubhai Ambani is a brilliant example of that.”