Mumbai News: Nexus In Hospitals Prolongs Patients' Wait For MRIs

Mumbai: The world’s richest civic body, which has a huge health budget, has not been able to provide a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine at the state-run BYL Nair Hospital. The hospital has had only one machine since 2018 that also needs to be repaired after every 10-12 days causing inconvenience to the patients.

For a fortnight, the MRI machine is lying defunct as the helium gas which is required for its working has been over and the hospital will take two to three more weeks to get the helium gas refilled. Until then patients advised to undergo MRI are forced to go to Sir Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy hospital for the same. However, it is not the first time patients are facing inconvenience at the civic-run hospitals for faulty MRI machines.

“We have collaborated with five laboratories around the hospitals which do MRI at the same cost available at the hospital which is ₹2,500. Emergency patients who are in urgent need are sent to JJ hospital,” said Dr Sudhir Medhekar, Dean, BYL Nair hospital.

One MRI machine in each of the four civic-run hospitals

There is one MRI machine in each of the four civic-run hospitals – KEM, Sion, Nair and Cooper.

The matter of non-functional MRI machines at Nair Hospital dates back to February 2018, when a patient, Rajesh Maru, a resident of Lalbaug, was killed after being pulled into the machine with an oxygen cylinder. After the incident, the hospital’s radiology department was shut for a few months and patients were asked to visit private clinics for MRIs. Recently a budget of ₹32 crore was quoted which was canceled by the corporation and was asked to re-tender it with a new quotation.

“The BMC health department is not doing anything in favour of patients as most of the hospitals have faulty MRI machines, CT scans, and X-rays forcing patients to shell out extra from their pocket,” said an official.

He further said that there is a big nexus in the hospitals due to which essentials and necessary things for hospitals get delayed. The MRI machine issue has been going on for many years but still, there has been no concrete solution to maintain it.

Dependence on MRI manufacturing companies

“We have to depend on MRI manufacturing companies to provide technicians which always gets delayed and each hospital is given ₹3-5 lakh for repairing the parts. The hospitals issued several advertisements but no one responded. The hospitals had to do re-tendering as the quotation was not meeting up to expectations of the official or doctors in the CPD department and hospitals,” said an official.

“We learned that the BMC tendering process is very difficult, owing to which bidders find themselves restrained. Moreover, the higher authorities pointed out unnecessary loopholes in the tender so they can add their commission. The retendering work involves a lot of paperwork and it takes two to three months,” said another official.