New Delhi: The jury seems to be still out on a decade old complaint of negligence in Sir Ganga Ram hospital. A consumer court has recently slapped compensation verdict holding the hospital and its five doctors guilty of being negligent and deficient. As a corollary to this over the top verdict, even High Court and apex medical regulatory body, which gave clean chit to the hospital in the same case, come up as guilty of being negligent in its duty to deliver justice.
The matter is complicated because consumer court finds fault where High court saw none. Despite High Court’s Clean Chit to the hospital, Consumer Court goes ballistic. Is Sir Ganga Ram Hospital victim of hyper judicial activism? Or two prior verdicts on this case were really deficient? It may end up as a case of one-upmanship. The jury is still out.
Compensation money may not matter much but what has perturbed hospital is that despite clean chit from High Court and apex medical regulatory boy, Consumer court went ballistic. To the chagrin and consternation of hospital authorities, the verdict from CC comes as bolt from the blue. It casts slur on a hospital which has more often than not earned the reputation of being the best healthcare model in India. While such allegations and verdicts may be cool for other private hospitals in Delhi but Sir Ganga Ram finds it a bit distressing. Sir Ganga Ram hospital is not used to such slur.
The hospital in its statement sent to Medicare News has strongly contested the charge of negligence. The statement goes thus: ‘In relation to News published in some News Papers regarding adverse judgement/ order passed by Hon’ble State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Delhi, against Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and some doctors in respect of case no. 594/2016 “Basant Lal Sharma Vs SGRH & Ors” , it is humbly clarified that while no negligence / deficiency of services was found on the part of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital & its doctors, by Delhi Medical Council in its order on 30.12.2015, by Medical Council of India in its order on 10.11.2017 and the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi (Writ Petition order dated 10.10.2018 & order in LPA dated 03.12.2018 ), the order of Hon’ble State Commission dated 09.02.2024 is surprising. The same is being studied in detail for further course of action.’
The matter goes back to 2014 when complainant’s wife was admitted in the hospital and diagnosed as a case Hodgkin Lymphoma. The state consumer Disputes Redressal Commission recently disregarded prior clean chit verdicts and held Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and its five doctors guilty of medical negligence in treatment of the said patient diagnosed as that of Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The consumer court has ordered to pay rupees 5, 10, 000 as damages and rupees 1, 20, 000 on count of mental agony and 90, 000 litigation charges.
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