doctors and economics!
Most doctors do not know pricing. Surely, none of them know how to price their own services. Tell them stories, give them examples, it does not matter. They continue to do the same thing, charge the same rates, allow to be abused…the same story continues.
I met a big chain of ‘gynaec’ hospitals. They charge Rs. 350,000 for a delivery. If you say this to the typical 53 year old gynaec will say “I charge only Rs. 49,000”. Is this a virtue? I do not know. Is it wrong to charge Rs. 350,000 for a day…when the doc is charging only Rs. 50k? I do not know. However when I drink tea at the roadside I pay Rs. 15, and when I have tea in Taj I pay Rs. 900 including taxes. Will Taj reduce the price if I tell them about the guy on the footpath? surely not.
When I go to a clean, well maintained hospital I know I am willing to pay a price for everything that I get there. We expect a doctor to put in 15 years of studies (after he turns 18) and then expect him/her to charge Rs. 200 a visit. Sure, there are patients like this, but there are people willing to pay Rs. 2000 a visit. Doctors like other professionals have to choose where they want to practice, who they want as a patient, and how much they should charge. A doctor in Mumbai has the choice of practicing in Bhiwandi or Bandra. Make that choice. Nothing wrong in choosing your patients. Apollo has made its choice, right? It is up to you to choose your location of work. Make that choice.
India attracts the best students for doing medicine. I feel that itself is wrong. We need people with far less intelligence and far more empathy for the patient. However, the best people academically do not get paid anywhere near their counterparts in banking, advertising or FMCG industry. Recently 2 hospitals in Mumbai are paying more than 1 Million US $ as salary. Feels good.
As Indians we want medicare for free. So many hospitals do free cataract operations. and I have no clue how long we will continue to give free services. So doctors are expected to study for 15 years, and then render free services. Making doctors understand costing, cash-flow, investments, RoI, RoE…is almost impossible. One doc told me “our hospital loots patients”. I asked him to explain. He said – “one medicine is available for Rs. 180 per strip of 10 tablets but when we issue it to the patient we charge Rs. 40 per tablet”. I then had to explain the cost of receiving, inventorizing, storage costs, insurance, working capital usage….even then he was not convinced …what do I do?
It is well established that doctors do not understand complicated math. Now I found out that they do not understand even simple math…
kinshuk4
Lets not make everything capitalistic. We have so many poor people in our country. Rs. 18 for a tablet can become Rs. 25, but Rs. 40 is too much. That means either hospital is greedy for profit or it has one of the worst inventory system. We are the people where we say – “hum us desh ke wasi hai jaha thode mei gujara hota hai”. I am not saying we have to become lefist or marxist. I am saying lets have socio-capitalist India, where rich and poor divide goes down atleast for the basic services. We will always have people comparing with each other i.e. irshya (jealousy, etc). We are 3rd largest when it comes to PPP, lets become number 1. Jai Hind.
kamalgarg1958
I fully agree with the author. Most professionals which include Doctors,Engineers and even CAs do not understand any of the basics of pricing, customer profiling and even customer satisfaction, for that matter. Whether Rs. 200 a visit is less or Rs. 2000 a visit is more should be left to individual patient and should not become a matter of discussion over any format. I have tried to convince many doctors and engineers to price their services differently and along with that improve their customer profiling and customer satisfaction. They will do nothing and keep on doing the way they have been doing since ages. Probably the only other profession, where they have learnt the art of not only charging and even fleecing the customer is the profession of lawyers. They charge hell of a lot from their clients.