Decoding Healthcare in India: Part III

Part III: During Treatment

UdaipurTimes, Oct 13, 2026 - Ensuring correct treatment and its processes is key to a healthy outcome. While treatment is ongoing, there are scores of related elements to navigate and deal with. Thoughtful treatment decisions will reduce unnecessary complications, build confidence and support a more effective treatment.

To read Part II, click here

Medicines

Watch what you are paying for and what you are receiving

The pharmacy economics of Indian healthcare are poorly understood by most patients. Even on regular medicines, pharmacies routinely offer discounts of 5 to 20 per cent but only if you ask. Never pay the full MRP without at least requesting a discount.

For expensive medications, particularly injectables, chemotherapy drugs or tablets, hospital may not give  enough discount. Check price in open market with distributors.

Cases of high-value medicines being substituted or, in some documented instances, not administered at all (with only saline water given) are not unknown. For any costly medication being administered during hospitalisation, ensure it is given in your presence or in the presence of your caregiver. Keep regular records of every drug and every dosage.

The Power of Mindset and Positivity in Healing

Medical science consistently supports the observation that psychological state influences physical recovery. Patients with high motivation, strong social support and positive outlook heal measurably faster than those who are depressed, isolated or surrounded by negativity.

During a serious illness, protect your mental environment with the same seriousness as your physical treatment. Let one doctor manage your treatment and resist the well-meaning interference of friends and family who want to play doctor’s role. Avoid people who speak negatively about your prognosis, who bring anxiety and fear into your room, or who push alternative treatments or dietary restrictions without medical foundation.

As for diet, modern medical science has significantly relaxed many traditional food restrictions for most conditions. Your treating doctor is the right person to advise you on what to eat and what to avoid and not a freelance nutritionist, not a health influencer, and certainly not someone whose dietary advice comes from WhatsApp forwards.

Having the Right Caregiver

During a serious illness, a patient needs two kinds of support: a capable decision-making presence who can engage with doctors, understand medical information and help navigate the system; and a day-to-day practical caregiver who ensures that medications are administered, that the patient is comfortable, and that the domestic environment remains stable.

The first type of caregiver generally has to be from friends or family, as it is not possible to outsource it. For the second role, professional caregivers exist and are often better suited than emotionally-involved relatives. Both caregivers should be, above all, positive in their presence and calm in their manner.

On Alternative and Unregulated Treatments

This point needs to be stated plainly: do not abandon evidence-based medical treatment for unregulated, unverified, unlicensed alternative cures when dealing with a serious illness.

There are practitioners of various traditional systems, some credible some not, who offer treatments without disclosing the contents of what they are administering, without government licensing and without any peer-reviewed evidence of efficacy for serious conditions. If these treatments worked as claimed, their inventors would be Nobel laureates and billionaires. They are not.

The appropriate use of complementary therapies alongside, not instead of, mainstream medical treatment is a conversation for you to have with your treating physician. But abandoning proven treatment for magical claims is a decision with potentially irreversible consequences.

Understanding Life Support Equipment

In small towns and among families with limited medical literacy, there is significant misunderstanding about ventilators and life support. A ventilator is not an end-of-life device. It is a machine that temporarily supports lung function when a patient's lungs are unable to do so independently allowing the body time to recover. Many patients who require ventilators go home eventually. Dead patients are not kept on ventilators.

Similarly, dialysis machines support kidney function during kidney failure or acute kidney injury. These are treatments bridges to recovery, not pronouncements of death. Medical decisions about whether to initiate, continue or withdraw life support are complex and should be made in close consultation with the treating medical team.

Document Organisation — A Discipline that Saves Lives and Claims

This point sounds administrative. It is not. Disorganised medical records have cost people their insurance claims, led to delayed diagnoses because old reports were unavailable and created chaos in emergencies when no one could find the relevant paperwork.

Maintain a systematic digital archive of all medical records. Every test report, every discharge summary, every prescription, every scan scanned, organised by date and stored in a named folder on a laptop or cloud service. Your insurance proposal form should be immediately accessible. Insurance claim papers should exist in soft copy. Hard copies should be organised in a physical file.

And with the target that any document should be retrievable within two minutes. In an emergency, where speed matters.

After Recovery

Recovering from a serious illness does not mean returning immediately to pre-illness behaviour. Many diseases, particularly cancers, cardiac conditions and certain infections, have meaningful recurrence rates. Post-treatment monitoring is not optional.

Observe your doctor's prescribed follow-up schedule rigorously. Post-treatment scans (such as PET scans for cancer survivors), blood markers and regular check-ups are not just cautionary gestures but the mechanism by which recurrence is caught early, when it is still treatable.

Do not let inconvenience, cost or a sense of "I've already been through this once" get in the way of your follow-up discipline.

Tomorrow read Part IV: Insurance

Rajesh Chaplot is the recipient of:

• Pravasi Bhartiya Samman Award 2019, the highest Non-Resident Indian Award, conferred upon him by the President of India
• Golden Jubilee Award 2020, the highest Civilian Award, conferred upon him by the President of Uganda