[Resolved]  Columbia Asia Hospital — Horrible Experience at Columbia Asia Yeshwanthpur

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Bangalore, Karnataka

Hi All,
I had a very horrifying experience at Columbia Asia Hospital. Let me start from the beginning.My son, aged 3 years was having recurring fevers and cold. We were referred by another doctor in our area to go to Columbia Asia, Yeshwanthpur. We reached the Hospital that day by evening, at around 7 PM. There was one Nurse who was sitting there at thecounter. i asked her to see a paediatrician. she saw all the previous reports and then spoke to some one ( some doc i assume!). she then told that some more tests need to be done for Malaria and Dengue. I was pretty sure that it was not Malaria/Dengue since the fever was not very High ( around 100) and also the fever used to come down after giving Calpol. If it is Malaria, unless you give the right medicines the fever would not come down. Also, none of the previous blood/urine reports suggested anything about these things. Anyways, one person started to prepare for the blood extraction. The moment he put the needle inside, my son started to shout, but then thats how kids are..so i kept quite. But looks like he was not getting the vein so he slowly started to revolve the needle maybe in order to pet into the vein. That was simply horrifying since my son was now simply uncontrollable. My father and my wife were holding him firmly. To my surprise he finally could not get the blood from that place. He then
started to prick him at another place in the opposite of the palm. There also, after sometime he gave up as he could not get the blood. Meanwhile you can imagine the situation of the kid. This ordeal does not end here. He then went to the other hand and tried at the third place and failed there also. We could not understand what is happenning as we never could imagine that an hospital with such a big name would not have the trained people to draw blood. Finally at the fourth place he was able to get the blood. Needless to say, you can imagine the plight of a 3 year old kid, who was forcibly held and pricked at four places for a simple blood test. The whole ward was resounding with his cries. Even then I did not loose my cool as i thought there might be some genuine issue. Later, i asked him what was the problem and why it took so much time. The person said, he was not able to get the vein properly. I said that he had
been through blood tests at other places but never had he faced such an issue. The person were infact able to draw the blood in the first try only. To this the guy simply looked the other side as if just saying to get the heck out of the place. The nurse at the counter too started ignoring me. While making the payments, i casually asked at the cash counter about the change of shifts. he told me that there are seperate set of people after the office hours. GOD forbid if these makeshift people after the office hours were just fill-in. I would not be surprised if these people are not qualified or competent enough in such basic pathological activities.I was so bewildered at that moment that i thought i should do a police complaint but the kid was crying like anything so i had to leave the place.I actually missed to take the name of that great person who tried to draw the blood. Now, comes the next day when we had to go in the morning to collect the reports. They said the reports would be ready by 10:30 in the morning. we went there but by that time one of the reports had not come.it took another 30 mins to actually know that the reports would be directly sent to the doctor. Later, through reviews posted on this website, i came to know that they send the samples outside. What kind of hospital is this?We went to the doctor for consultation with those reports. He was Mr. Arvind Kasagudo who is also the Head of the Medical Services there. I liked his diagnosis and it actually helped my kid. By the way, nothing was found in the report. I also narrated this incident to him. To my bewilderment, he said that even he may need to try 3-4 times to get the vein. That was according to him, normar in case of kids. Now that simply stumped me. i had never heard of anything like that or experienced this. All the other places the person was able to draw the blood in one shot and here is the "Head of the Medical services" trying to justify which was a case of gross misconduct. What options i had? I just requested him to lok in to this matter.Overall, if you see, it is a very sorry state of affairs for a reputed group like Columbia Asia.

The Medical services in Bangalore is slowly turning out to be like another profit making machine with little sensitivity towards the patient. No wonder that Mediclaim has withdrawn Cashless facilities from majority of the hospitals.

Conclusion- Do yourself a favour. Please dont go to Columbia Asia, yeshvanthpur.