Corruption ruins the doctor-patient relationship in India

It is sad to read Dr Berger’s account of the state of the medical profession in India. I am the chief executive of a non-profit hospital in Delhi and experience the effects of corruption at multiple levels – poor quality of doctors because of lack of standards in medical education, demands for kickbacks for patient referrals, fixation of doctors with only increasing the size of their practice, and resistance by doctors to hold themselves accountable by engaging in meaningful audit. Deviance has been normalized to a huge extent in our environment. Any successful intervention will have to take a systems approach and address myriad interrelated factors. In addition to those discussed in the article, I want to point out the relatively low remuneration for physician services in India, poor consensus around professional code of conduct, and lack of sufficient leadership capacity within the medical profession.