Time to introspect. 🙏🏼

I have been wanting to write this for a long time—not against any individual doctor or institution, but about a growing culture in healthcare that concerns me deeply.

There was a time when medicine was primarily about patients, relationships, empathy and professional respect.

Today, in many large corporate hospitals, healthcare increasingly feels like a business model where the patient is a customer and the doctor is part of a system.

Recently, I got my daughter operated at a reputed eye centre in Delhi.

The experience was very different from what we are accustomed to in smaller hospitals.

The entire process felt almost like being in a passport office—you move from one chamber to another, following announcements and instructions.

The premises were flooded with advertisements promoting different procedures and technologies. There was hardly anything that conveyed the warmth or personal connection that we traditionally associate with a doctor-patient relationship.

You meet the operating surgeon only briefly. A significant part of the consultation is spent explaining various procedures, newer technologies and their costs, including whether you have insurance or not.

But after the surgery, the most basic question remains:

“How did the operation go?”

In a setup where patients are not admitted and there are no conventional rounds, I found it surprising that the operating surgeon did not even spend a minute explaining personally whether the surgery had gone well.

You leave after 15 minutes with several questions still unanswered.

On another occasion, I was with my father, himself a senior-most surgeon in our city. We were made to wait for hours before and after a follow-up consultation with a neurosurgeon.

And honestly, who you are should not matter.

If a doctor colleague is waiting in my hospital, I feel it is my responsibility to immediately make sure that he or she is attended to. In our setup, we don’t even charge professional consultation fees from the staff of a fellow working doctor.

That is not charity.

That is professional courtesy.

Unfortunately, I sometimes feel that this personal touch is disappearing from medicine.

And the irony is that the consequences are often borne by doctors working in smaller hospitals.

Patients who have experienced impersonal, commercial treatment in large corporate establishments sometimes carry that frustration with them—and the smaller hospitals and individual doctors end up facing the anger of a patient who is already disillusioned with the medical profession.

I am not saying that every corporate hospital or every corporate doctor functions this way. There are many excellent doctors and institutions providing outstanding care.

But the culture deserves introspection.

Doctors cannot complain endlessly about the declining respect for our profession while ignoring the behaviour that contributes to it.

And there is another uncomfortable reality.

If a famous actor or actress walks into a hospital, suddenly the entire team appears. Photographs are taken, introductions are made, and everyone is eager to be part of the next Instagram post, podcast or publicity opportunity.

But if an ordinary doctor colleague is sitting outside waiting for consultation?

Sometimes nobody even bothers.

That is where we need to pause and ask ourselves—what happened to the fraternity of medicine?

Small hospitals may not have huge buildings, expensive branding, elaborate marketing departments or multiple corporate layers.

But many of them still have something priceless:

Personal relationships.

A doctor knowing the patient by name.

A surgeon personally explaining the operation.

A colleague being given priority—not because of his status, but because he is a fellow member of the medical fraternity.

A patient being treated as a human being rather than a number in a queue.

Healthcare can certainly be modern, technologically advanced and commercially sustainable.

But it must never lose its human face.

Because ultimately, medicine is not just about operating rooms, machines, packages, insurance and revenue.

It is about people.

And perhaps it is time for all of us—corporate hospitals, smaller hospitals and individual doctors alike—to introspect.

Are we building better healthcare… or merely bigger healthcare businesses?

Time to introspect. 🙏🏼