PUNE District Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum (PDCGRF) has directed Poona Hospital and Research Centre to pay a compensation of Rs 5.5 lakh to a woman who alleged medical negligence on the part of the hospital. The woman had moved the forum complaining that due to medical negligence by a neurosurgeon attached with the hospital she was forced to repeat a brain related surgery at another private hospital which led to financial loss along with mental and physical harassment.
Vaishali Sandeepkumar Kothari (45), a resident of Karmala in Solapur, had met with an accident in 2005. Following this she started facing problems maintaining balance. In April 2007, she was admitted in the Poona Hospital to undergo a brain related surgery. She claimed that she paid Rs 1.11 lakh to the hospital for this surgery.
Even after this surgery, she claimed, she was not healed. Kothari alleged that the surgery was conducted based on an old MRI report when a fresh report should have been obtained before the surgery.
A few months later, she approached another doctor who after conducting a fresh MRI scan, diagnosed that the cerebellar tonsils in her brain had not been removed in the previous surgery.
The next year, she got herself admitted at the Kothrud-based Sahyadri Hospital where the procedure was repeated for Rs 1.57 lakh and after this, she started feeling better, she said.
In 2009, she moved the forum, demanding compensation for the mental agony and financial losses caused. The hospital and the surgeon denied these allegations and argued that the case was a medically complicated one, adding that the claim of negligence was insufficient because there is a need to establish it by providing evidence, while emphasising that no expert report had been submitted to do so.
The forum held the doctor responsible for this and asked both him and the hospital to pay the sum jointly to the complainant within the next six weeks.
