A 60-year-old woman with Covid died in front of a private hospital (Representation)
Calcutta:
A 60-year-old woman suffering from COVID-19 died in an ambulance outside a private hospital in the city when she was reportedly forced to wait by her authorities, who allegedly demanded that Rs three lakh be first paid for her admission, family members said on Wednesday.
Hospital officials denied the charge and said the woman’s family received a treatment estimate, but were not forced to make payments.
The woman is from Tamluk in the East Midnapore district and the alleged incident took place Monday evening after she was taken to hospital from a nursing home in the city after testing positive and reporting serious problems with health, said a Kolkata police official.
His son Nazeem Khan has filed a complaint against the Anandapur Police Station Hospital, the official said.
The alleged incident took place a day after the West Bengal Clinical Establishments Commission authorized hospitals to charge patients for admission an advance not exceeding Rs 50,000 or 20% of the estimated cost of treatment, depending on the amount. lowest, but not refusing admission or treatment if payment has not been made immediately.
“The hospital authorities asked us to deposit three lakh of rupees. We managed to pay 80,000 rupees and asked them to start my mother’s treatment ensuring that they would recover the remaining amount in the meantime. But the hospital told us that treatment would not be started unless full payment was made, ”Khan said.
Later, Rs two lakh more was transferred to a hospital bank account by the woman’s eldest son, Latif Khan of Abu Dhabi, he said.
“But by then my mother had died in the ambulance … We repeatedly asked the hospital to send her a doctor, but her authorities insisted that unless she saw a proof that the money had been transferred to them, no one would go. to my mother, ”he said.
“If they (the hospital authorities) had treated my mother in time, she could have been saved,” Khan said sobbing.
Denying the charge, a senior hospital official said: The patient was brought in very serious condition.
Doctors had tried CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) in the ambulance but could not resuscitate her.
Police said an investigation into the incident was underway and the hospital had been asked to provide the CCTV footage.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
