medical services

How can we rate medical services? Ok leave away with rating how do we decide upon which hospital/doctor to approach when we are in need of medical help? Traditional concept of "family doctors" is fading away from our society. Medical services are becoming commercialized. Approach for diagnosis has taken an unfortunate course.
Who cares about patients past medical history and treatments? Whom to blame for this? A doctor is mere a cog in the wheel of hospital. A doctor is still considered as a respectable person in India. But what are the factors that are offending their morale.

Just to think about profession of doctors. Many of my school friends, bothers and sisters are doctors.
As on today an MBBS doctor passed out from a reputed Govt. Medical college is unable to earn 10K, whereas a normal graduate could earn more than 15K from call center jobs. And the duration of MBBS course is another factor that discourages an individual from taking up medical science for undergraduate studies. Recently I met few doctors who got MBBS degree in last two years. They are leading impoverished life. They can’t see any road map to earn 25K per month in near feature. Very few can invest money to start their own hospital and run it profitably. Hardly anyone interested in MD or any other higher education options. Of course they constitute only a section of doctor’s community. Though you can be kind enough towards one or two sections majority of them are becoming intolerable.

When looked at this problem on national front, India as a nation is loosing the ability to provide quality medical services to common man. Our medical resources are depleting. Super specialty hospitals are succeeding in providing good infrastructure and one stop service centers but loosing on quality.

Casualty gets lowest preference. It’s pathetic to here about it but that is the reality which we end up facing every now and then. Either inexperienced doctors or doctors who don’t have back to back schedules are placed there. Many of them lack courtesy towards a patient. Sense of urgency doesn't have any role to play there.

I observed diagnose process closely for out-patient cases in so called multi specialty hospitals.
Here is a brief account

First step is to blame on hereditary. Because you can’t change your ancestors its easy to convince you by telling that you are bound to get this problem, if not today some time later in your life time. It’s quite a simple formula to diagnose. And this works out well in most cases.

Second step is to choose package. There are so many pre fed packages to filter out. Here the approach is not to diagnose, but to eliminate non probables. This is because multiple choice questions are quite easy compared to fill in the blanks. So chose which packages to apply upon. And enough care should be taken while selecting so that the reports are not be available for 36 hours of time. For those 36 hours prescribe pain killers and antibiotics. Good when patient collects reports and comes back ask for improvements; obviously pain killers influence him to say "feeling better to some extent".

Third step is dependent on second step. If patient complains that there is no improvement rather its worse, refer to another department. If you are fortunate this is where the actual treatment starts. Else you may go around another round before getting referred to another department or doctor or hospital.

Fourth step is contrary to third step or self diagnosis. When you turn up to hospital to say that you recovered, you got pay fine at pharmacy for recovering so quickly. Probably four to fives doses in a day, a dose before meal a dose after meal. 1 - 1 - 1 or 1 - 0 - 1 or 0 - 0 - 1 or upon suffering. Obviously you can’t meet this dosage particularly when you know that you recovered. So either discontinue that treatment or keep those tablets for self medication at later point in time till they expire.

Are there any such tools to rate hospitals in our locality, write treatment experiences and praise / curse? Are there any web tools where we can log our medical history, search on others for symptoms or experiences? We have so many forums about computer systems where are they for human systems? We got online photos albums, journal for entertaining tidings in life, email for quick communication. We got some forums for discussing about good or bad about a car, camera, phone and etc... We rate them and refer them.

Is there anything www community does in this direction?

Providing online medical services for a free or minimal charge is secondary, but at least are there any sites or forums to bridge patients and good doctors?