Medical Negligence: Apollo Hyderabad to Pay Compensation

Medical Negligence: Apollo Hyderabad to Pay Compensation

Apollo Hospitals in Jubilee Hills will be paying Rs 5 lakh compensation to the family of a victim who died as a result of the hospital staff’s medical negligence. The victim's family is receiving the amount after the hospital authorities were directed by the Telangana State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (TSCDRC) on November 3.

As per the reports, the family of the victim filed a complaint against the Apollo Hospitals following the victim's death on March 9,2011 which was within 20 hours of her knee replacement surgery. The family alleged that despite the patient’s history of asthma, hypertension, diverticulosis, and hiatus hernia, she was not shifted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for post-surgery observation.

However, the hospital denied the allegations by the family sayig that post-surgery care was taken, the TSCDRC found the hospital guilty of repeated medical negligence. 

They found out that the reason for the death of the patient was falsely concluded as "acute cardio-respiratory failure in a patient suffering from Hypertensive Heart Disease," although the pre-operative evaluation reflected that the person had no medical history of cardiac symptoms.

The Court further said that the knee replacement surgery in itself is not a life-threatening procedure and had reasonable precautions been taken, the ensuing complications could have been avoided and averted.

The order concluded saying, 'The care was given entirely by the hospital staff comprising mainly of the nurses and duty doctor. They should have monitored the patient closely and especially after she vomited. Prompt care and attention was certainly lacking and the sequence of events is clearly indicative of negligence.'