HOW DO PATIENTS LOOK AT A HOSPITAL? What is their perspective? Those are loaded and layered questions. For example, a colleague recently quipped: “In the history of hospital discharges, nobody has been discharged in the morning.”
From experience, I must agree. The previous night, the doctor would have said that one could leave in the morning. And then one would dream of lunch at home and a siesta in a familiar bed. But by the time the discharge summary is ready, unused medicines are returned, bills settled, and insurance forms signed, it would invariably be late afternoon or even sundown. That is a familiar perspective about hospitals.
This week’s issue of your favourite magazine is the annual special on India’s best hospitals, backed by THE WEEK-Hansa Research Best Hospitals Survey 2025. Patients are at the centre of the main article by Principal Correspondent Pooja Biraia, with many of them sharing testimonies about doctors and nurses who went the extra mile to bring them back from death’s doorstep.
The survey covers 19 cities (plus the National Capital Region). A primary survey was conducted among health care experts—788 general physicians and 1,609 specialists.
Professors Amit Sethi of IIT Bombay and Dr Swapnil Rane of the Tata Memorial Centre have contributed a column that calls for a mission-driven and public-first approach to using AI in health care. Sethi and Rane caution India against mimicking the west and insist that AI alone will not heal India’s health care problems.
This is also a very special week for us as THE WEEK Health Summit 2025 is being held in Delhi. The chief guest is Anupriya Patel, minister of state for health and family welfare, and chemicals and fertilisers. Other speakers include Bansuri Swaraj, our columnist and member of the Lok Sabha; popular author Chetan Bhagat; Dr Sudarshan Ballal, chairman, Manipal Hospitals; Dr M. Srinivas, director, AIIMS (Delhi), and other stalwarts.
For me, the showstopper is Dr G. Thomas Budd, professor of medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. He is the principal investigator of the breast cancer vaccine trials. And joining him on stage will be an old friend of THE WEEK, Dr Jame Abraham, chairman of the department of hematology and medical oncology at Cleveland Clinic.
In other news, Chief of Bureau (Delhi) Namrata Biji Ahuja travelled to Manipur to cover the return of Thuingaleng Muivah, general secretary of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah). The patriarch’s defiance came as a surprise to New Delhi, Namrata writes, while hoping for peace in those beautiful hills.
Returning to the cover on how patients view hospitals, I am reminded of Dr Ida Scudder’s statement that it was three knocks in the night that changed her life. Her father, Dr John Scudder, was a missionary doctor. While she was spending her holidays with her parents in Tamil Nadu, three men from different communities knocked on their door in a single night, asking for a female doctor to assist their wives during childbirth. As there was no one, the men returned into the darkness. All three women died.
John would not be allowed to see them as he was a man, and then there was the spectre of caste. Moved by the death of the women and their unborn babies, Ida returned to the US and graduated from Cornell University Medical College in 1899, among the first batch of women. She started her medical work in Vellore in 1900. This year, CMCH Vellore marks its 125th anniversary.
Today, our girls are specialists and superspecialists in medicine. The Union government is powering a massive push to provide care to all citizens. And I am sure no one shuns a doctor based on caste anymore.