THE JOURNEY BEGINS

I formally inaugurated ‘Khetarpal Hospital’ on 3rd March 1992 amidst a congregation of family and close friends. On the opening day of my hospital, I performed 7 surgeries which is a feat in itself.

I had to start from the scratch. My brother Dr. Vinod khetarpal extended a very generous helping hand both financially and otherwise in realising my endeaver. I can never thank him enough for the same. Also, a lot of my patients from Dr. R.M.L Hospital like Dayanand Uncle, Roshni Aunty, Mr. Budhram, Mr. Narendra Seth, Mr. Dharmendra Seth, Mr. Amrit to name a few, readily lent me money at the time. As the word spread that I have opened my own hospital, old patients started pouring in and in no time I was able to repay all my loans.

In the initial days, I used to schedule all the surgeries for the weekends. My typical strategy included conducting OPD consultations on week days and start surgeries by the Saturday evening.

Since the start of my professional career, financial gains were never my goal. I have always believed that we must work hard so as to give the very best to our patients and money will follow. This is exactly what happened with me. With the passage of time, I gathered the reputation of being the Messiah of the poor in the area. Many a times I operated patients without raising their bill. I thought it the best way of paying back to the society. Since I was working in a private set-up that too owned and regulated by me, I was in a position of calling the shots that were purely altruistic in nature.

Healthcare was not a very expensive industry back then. An appendectomy used to cost Rs. 3000, and the amount included all the paraphernalia e.g. bed cost, OT charges, OT medications etc. Cholecystectomy costed Rs. 6,000, Hydrocele repair was done for Rs 1000 and Lymph Node Biopsy costed a mere Rs. 500.

I feel blessed to have been associated with some very eminent doctors such as (Prof.) Dr. S.P. Bajaj(Plastic surgeon); Dr. Sushil Sayal(Radiologist), Dr. Rajneesh Mehta(Orthopaedician).

Although my home is right behind the hospital, but if a patient is very sick, my conscience does not allow me to go home. On any given day, on an average, I normally spend 16-18 hours in the hospital. Many a times, I sleep in the hospital itself so that I am easily accessible to the staff. I must say my wife and family have been extremely supportive of my profession. There are days when I take up to 6 rounds of the hospital, and it goes without saying that every round is a dedicated one.

Since the establishment of my hospital, I always made it a point to make a personal visit along with my OPD assistant, Mr. Vijay Singh to my patients on the occasion of Diwali. On the first Diwali after my hospital’s inauguration, I visited 93 families and presented them with various gifts. With the passage of time, I was being treated as a family member by many families. They say faith is something that stays deep in the subconscious and produces the results as desired by the voice of soul; I render this theory to be impeccably correct. I have witnessed very serious patients being referred to me from the remotest possible places by someone whom I had treated in the past, and the recovery defied the ordinary scientific logics. When faith starts to heal, the traditional methods of scientific treatment get a boost with a positive outcome.

The practice of taking commission from the outsourced investigations had always been rampant. Nevertheless, I dared to be different. I refused to take any cuts. Instead I started another trend – I gave discounts to all my patients who were not well financially. To the poor patients I used to offer 30%-40% discounts when any outsourced investigation was required, and to the middle class patients, I used to offer 20%-25% discounts. That way I was helping my patients in rendering them ith cheaper healthcare and it gave me a lot of good will in return. Countless times I have denied taking hospital bill from a patient just because I didn’t feel like charging him; sometimes his poor financial state was the reason and at other times I just wanted to extend a helping hand.

I clearly remember a serene evening in the early years of my newly opened hospital. I was conducting evening OPD as usual when two well groomed persons entered my consultation chamber. They were representatives of a well known pharmaceutical company and wanted to speak to me. After exchanging initial pleasantries, they offered me the keys to a swanky brand new car as I had prescribed medications of their brand and this was their way of returning the favour to me. Ifelt outraged. I politely declined their offer and asked them to leave. They were totally taken aback. When they left, I felt
blessed to have the courage to stand by my ethics.

The next morning when I woke up, I felt rejuvenated. I had finally arrived, on my own terms !!!