Kathmandu Post

Metro»

"Doctors’ agents" hunting for patients

BIRATNAGAR, JAN 18 - A number of people will approach you to extend their help If you pass by the Rangeli Road in Biratnagar scanning numerous signboards of doctors.
These persons are new brand of agents who thrive on the commission they receive by referring the patients to the doctors.
One such person is Chiranjibi Dulal who works as an agent for a consultant homeopath Dr Nara Hari Thapaliya. Dulal, who is not a qualified medical practitioner, takes you to his single-room clinic and inquires about your problems like a doctor does. He checks your blood-pressure, asks you to take some tests and finally refers you to Thapaliya whose clinic is at Bhanutole, a fifteen minute walk from the spot where Dulal has first taken you. Dulal’s service was of course not free. He will charge you some Rs 50 to Rs 100, and asks his accomplice to escort you to the clinic of Thapaliya in rickshaws that remains on stand-by there.
When the scribe went to Thapaliya through Dulal as a patient and inquired about the clinic in Rangeli Road, he said Dulal to be a ‘compounder’ working in his branch office.
This much is fine. However, Dulal and other persons like him working for number of doctors don’t end their tinkering there. They are on lookout for patients arriving from villages to consult the renowned physicians of the city who run their clinics in the same locality.
The agents stop these patients from going to the intended clinics and argue that their doctor is the better one. Most of these villagers are convinced by these agents and end up consulting doctors referred by them.
"I came here to consult Dr Gyanendra Giri but ended up here on the insistence of Dulal," said Prakash Lama, a patient from Pathari. The agents then meet the doctors before the patients do and negotiate about the commission.
There are many such agents roaming in the Rangeli Road looking for the innocent patients due to its proximity to the Koshi Zonal Hospital and some of the popular doctors’ clinics.
"Some of them are government employees who remain in the roadside rather than in their respective offices in order to earn extra bucks misleading the patients, " says a person running a medicine shop in the road.Posted on: 2004-01-19 04:01

---