While awarding the compensation, the commission considered various aspects, including losses of income and consortium, payment made by the patient for medical treatment, travelling expenses and day-to-day medical and nursing-care costs.
New Delhi: The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) has directed the Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in Okhla Road here and one of its doctors to pay Rs 65 lakh to a patient who suffered a permanent brain injury during an angioplasty procedure in 2011.
The patient is in a vegetative state currently.
The commission, comprising its presiding member Justice Ram Surat Ram Maurya and member Bharat Kumar Pandya, was hearing a complaint filed by a woman claiming compensation for medical negligence and injury caused to her husband during angioplasty in May 2011.
Taking note of the evidence before it, the commission said, “It is proved that Opposite Party 2 (Dr Ashok Seth, chairman of the institute’s cardiac sciences department) had ignored the lung condition of the patient and proceeded for angioplasty, although the patient was co-morbid and angioplasty was elective and not compulsory at that time.
“They (the hospital and the doctor) cannot shirk their responsibility by saying that the patient and his daughter were doctors and they had given their informed consent, knowing well the risks and benefits,” it added.
According to the complaint, the institution and its doctor took around 72 hours to diagnose that the patient suffered from a brain haemorrhage or seizure and the “inordinate delay” caused him permanent brain damage.
After the seizure, the patient underwent the surgery and subsequently, was in a coma for a month, the complaint said.
“When he came out of the coma, he suffered from complete paralysis of the left side and lost his ability to speak, hear or understand other people and is in a vegetative state, and he is unable to do anything and requires help for doing his routine work,” the complaint said.
In its verdict dated August 7, the commission said adequate compensation had to be provided to the patient.
“Opposite Parties 1 (Fortis Escorts) and 2 (Seth) are jointly and severally directed to pay Rs 65 lakh with interest at the rate of 6 per cent per annum from the date of filing this complaint till the date of payment, within two months,” the commission said.
It observed, “The case of an injured and disabled person is more pitiable and the feeling of hurt, helplessness, despair and often destitution endures every day. The support that is needed by a severely-handicapped person comes at an enormous price, physical, financial and emotional, not only on the victim but even more so on his family and attendants and the stress saps their energy and destroys their equanimity.”
While awarding the compensation, the commission considered various aspects, including losses of income and consortium, payment made by the patient for medical treatment, travelling expenses and day-to-day medical and nursing-care costs.