Cancer care should be affordable to all and hospitals must find ways to reduce the non-hospital costs borne by patients and their families, an oncologist
said at a conference on Saturday.
Mammen Chandy, a former director of Tata Medical Center, cited the example
of the accommodation facility that the New Town hospital built with CSR (corporate social responsibility) funds.
He said patients, and their families, from faraway places end up spending a
lot of money on accommodation and food during the treatment and hospitals should help reduce the expenditure.
“Hospitals may try to create accommodation facilities for patients at a very cheap rate. These facilities might also provide cooking infrastructure so that patients and their families can cook their own food,” Chandy said on Saturday while speaking at a session on cancer care at Cahocon, a two-day conference where doctors, hospital administrators and others involved in the healthcare sector debated and discussed important issues of the sector.
The conference, held at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre, was organised by the Consortium of Accredited Healthcare Organisations (CAHO).
“A major challenge in cancer care is the gap between those who can afford it and those who cannot. We have to bridge this gap between the haves and the have-nots,” Chandy
said.
“We must find ways to reduce the non-hospital costs borne by patients to make it (the treatment) more affordable for them,” added the oncologist.
Premashraya, the accommodation facility at Tata Medical Center, figured in Chandy’s talk.
Located about 500m from the hospital campus, the accommodation facility is run by the trust that runs the hospital. The building can accommodate 500 persons — 200 patients and 300 people who stay with them. Each room in the facility accommodates two or three persons.
An official at the facility told Metro later that they had two floors only for
paediatric patients, where one can stay for free. On the other floors, the charge is Rs 150 per person per day.
The building came up at a cost of Rs 40 crore, which Coal India gave under the CSR funding, Chandy said.
An official at another private hospital in the city said it might not be possible
for every hospital to set up such a facility because not all get high levels of CSR funding.
The official said multiple guest houses and staying facilities have come up in Mukundapur, which has multiple hospitals.
Some of the big ones in the zone are AMRI Hospitals, Medica Superspecialty Hospital, Peerless Hospital and the RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences.
“There are staying facilities in the area where the charge is Rs 500 per day
per room,” said the official.