We have heard numerous instances of untimely death due to fully commercialized and corrupt private hospitals doing unethical medical practices, medical negligence, fraudulent billing etc. Is it not time that they are made accountable for their actions and are brought under the lens of a rather stringent govt. regulator? Is it not time that govt. creates a forum to raise such concerns for people to fight for justice? Isn't it time that such hospitals be banned and shut down for the general good of the society so that many more innocent lives are not taken?

I have been a victim of this and below is the shocking story of my beloved father who had to lose his life for a disease he never really had.

My father Late Mr. Nirad Narayan Mohapatra (UHID: 00126334), was underwent treatment at the Fortis Hiranandani at Vashi, under the care of the head oncology surgeon.

My father’s life was untimely taken due to the gross negligence on the part of the attending doctors of the hospital. My father was an acclaimed Odia film director, who received the second best national film award for his film “Maya Miriga”. The film was also a winner of the special jury award at the Hawaii Film Festival, USA and ‘Critics Week’ of Cannes in France. It is not only an immense personal loss for our family but also an immeasurable loss to the film fraternity.

I would like to highlight a few instances of gross negligence, described as under.

Please refer the attached case history with a timeline, that details out several other instances of negligence. Relevant internal medical case reports have been attached in the end (url https://drive.google.com/open?id=16bkpYdlW6SIEPP1y36kUghE1vWCLJVuN to corroborate the incidents referred, wherever necessary.

1. Conscious Indifference: My father was operated for a supra major surgery by your hospital surgeon, for suspected malignancy. He went ahead and performed the Whipple's surgery on 13th Jan 2015 without conducting a single test.

The Whipple’s surgery involves an extreme degree of risk and the doctor being fully aware of it, nevertheless proceeds with the surgery without any evidence of test. The biopsy that was done post surgery, arrived 10 days later and indicated NO malignancy at all.

Question: On what grounds a supra major surgery was performed, WITHOUT ANY prior investigation/ test?

2. Postoperative negligence: The doctors failed to administer postoperative analgesic, forcing my father to undergo the full brunt of the surgery, without the help of any pain relieving medication.

My father was taken out of the OT post-surgery at around 8:15 pm on 13th Jan 2015. The general anaesthesia had worn off during that time and he was mentally alert and communicating clearly. He constantly told me that “I can’t bear this pain. I am going to die on this bed”. I prodded the doctor that he should relieve him of the pain and they told me that "Epidural" (analgesic) has already been administered; however, it takes 30 mins for the analgesic to work effectively. He was in excruciating pain till 9.00pm when I asked them to check if Epidural has indeed taken effect. It was at that time that one of the ICU doctors realised that Epidural was yet to be administered. Then they eventually started him on that at around 9.15 pm. It took another 30 mins for it to take effect. Therefore, he had to bear the full impact of surgery for at least 1.5 hour.

There was no handover to the ICU. Neither the surgeon nor the assistant accompanied my father to the ICU. The ICU doctors were enquiring me about the medical history of my father.

Questions:

1. Why critical medication such as an analgesic, was missed out, post a supra major surgery?

2. Why basic procedure such as case history handoff was NOT done, prior to moving a patient to the ICU?



3. Postoperative monitoring negligence: Blood tests were not conducted daily after such a major surgery, even after there were reports of high fluid discharge.

The surgeon was out of the country after the surgery from 19th Jan to 23rd Jan 2015 for 5 days and left it to his assistant. On 19th Jan, my father had fluid discharge from his incision area and we informed the same to the assistant. He simply assumed that it was seroma or body fat (refer attached internal case report assuming seroma) and assured us that there is no cause of concern. He did not even think it was prudent to conduct CBC blood test to check the WBC levels or to do a pus swab culture for further investigation. The fluid discharge continued till 20th Jan and it kept increasing at an alarming rate. When the discharge did not stop,the head of internal medicine was brought in. She found on 20th Jan that the latest blood test was done way back on 17th Jan. On conducting a blood test, my father’s WBC count was in excess of 31000, which indicated he had high level of infection. Later, the pus swab confirmed that he had hospital inflicted bacterial infection (gram negative bacteria - klebsiella pneumoniae).

Questions:

1. Why the hospital was not sanitized to prevent a hospital-borne infection?



2. Why blood tests were not conducted daily after a supra major surgery, especially when there was heavy fluid discharge?



3. Even though the surgeon was out of country, the bill mentions the surgeon’s name and his charges for those dates. Why the unethical billing?

4. Negligence leading to 2nd surgery: My father was readmitted to the ICU for the 2nd time from 20th Jan to 26th Jan, due to bacterial infection. He was administered heavy dosage of antibiotics during this period along with surgical cleaning (1-2 times daily)

Subsequently, he was then taken out of the ICU, but the discharge from the incision was continuous and the wound was kept open. Due to the continuous discharge, he also suffered from skin excoriation. Subsequently, we noticed bleeding from his open incision wound. The doctor informed that this was expected, as the discharge contains pancreatic juice and it may have ruptured a few veins. This went on till 7th Feb, when the bleeding was profuse and his haemoglobin count had reduced to 5.9. He was taken to OT on Sunday, 8th Feb 15 for re-exploration of the surgery area. The surgeon updated us post the 2nd surgery that one of the reconstructed parts in the first surgery had not healed, and as a result there was leakage of pancreatic fluid.

Due to the negligence of the hospital to first check for hospital inflicted infection and secondly the lack of monitoring, led to this bacterial infection occurring and going undetected for days together, resulting in the infection to take life threatening proportions. The surgical cleaning of the incision wound and keeping the wound open, caused enormous pain and trauma, that could have all been avoided by the hospital.

Question:

1. What were the circumstances under which a 2nd surgery was deemed necessary?

2. How the reconstructed part from the first surgery opened up?

5. Fabrication of documents with an intention to defraud: The doctor decided to blatantly forge the death report, indicating that my father died of pancreatic cancer. (refer attachment forged death report suggesting cancer)

Question:

1. There was no proof of pancreatic cancer, then how the death report suggests pancreatic cancer when my father had no cancer(malignancy) at all, which is substantiated by the report produced by their own hospital. (Postoperative Biopsy Report attached)

Attachments of the case