Admission into Apexcare hospital is a tale of going from hope to despair

PUNE The story of horrors at Apexcare hospital has only now started coming to light

PUNE The story of horrors at Apexcare hospital has only now started coming to light. However, complaints had begun in the Covid first wave itself, in 2020. A particularly harrowing story is that of a farmer whose family claims that his oxygen levels were shown to be in 60s, even when the oximeter showed it to be in 90s.

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A small concrete room, surrounded by endless agriculture fields is the home house for

a family of three - Bhimrao Khatave (55), his wife Sangita (45), and their daughter Snehal (21); until Covid-19 claimed Bhimrao’s life, or so the family was told by the Apexcare Covid hospital, where he breathed his last. These events unfolded in October 2020.

The Khatave family sold gold jewellery, two cows, and borrowed money from relatives in to pay the bill at the hospital after the 55-year-old spent 22 days there. The

family paid ₹3,50,000 for treatment and did not have any more left when the hospital staff allegedly asked for ₹40,000 more, according to Sangita.

Snehal, a final-year Arts student, is soft-spoken and determined to find a job after graduation. However, she refuses to consider nursing. “I saw how nurses treat people. I had never been to a hospital before. I do not wish to be in that kind of system,” she said, remembering the alleged arguments with the hospital staff while her father lay dead.

The uncle of Dr Mahesh Jadhav (36), the brother of Dr Madan Jadhav, who owns the hospital, was reminiscing days of pride that he Jadhav family enjoyed due he brothers’ achievements.

“They are both highly qualified and never should have lived in a small town. While Mahesh trained for plastic surgery in Aurangabad, Madan trained at KEM, Mumbai. Their father passed away and their mother is too unwell to be here,” said Rajendra Jadhav (57), paternal uncle of the Jadhav siblings.

One would think that the emotional, mental, and physical effects of the alleged misdeeds at the hospital were felt only by patients in Miraj; but the list of victims mentions people from other towns, including Pandharpur and Sangola.

SANGOLA

Saurabh Swamy (23), owner of a bakery and son of a home guard, is struggling to get an insurance claim for some ₹25,000 he spent on travel and treatment of his father Shashukant Swamy.

“We took him to the hospital on May 2 around 8:30pm. The ambulance driver was asking for ₹14,000, but I could not pay him that much. I paid him ₹4,000. When we reached the hospital, they asked for ₹50,000 deposit but I could only pay ₹10,000. By 3:40pm, they had told us that he was on bipap machine, even though they had promised a ventilator. Then he passed away. They kept on asking us to

clear the remaining bill,” said Saurabh Swamy.

When Swamy came to Miraj police station to record his statement, he came across other people from nearby villages who were suggested the name of the hospital by either ambulance drivers or private doctors.

“I met at least four other families who were from the same village and had lost their relative in the same hospital. I even found a person who was informed about the hospital by the same ambulance driver who had told my family about Apexcare,” said Swamy.

We spoke to at least two other families from Sangola and Bhose village areas of Solapur, who lost their patient at Apexcare and none of them were provided with a printed bill to explain the charges.

PANDHARPUR

At the peak of the second wave, four people from one family in Dnyaneshwar nagar in Pandharpur were struggling to get a hospital bed in their hometown. Ghule family had four members showing symptoms and eventually testing positive in the last week of April. To people in rural western Maharashtra, where beds were running out fast, the availability of a bed at Apexcare hospital seemed like a ray of hope.

“We were struggling to find a bed in Pandharpur. So we contacted a private doctor, but even he had normal beds and our 60-year-old grandmother needed a ventilator. Three other people in the family were also positive and needed hospitalisation. The doctor told us that there is bed availability at Apexcare in Miraj, and Miraj being a hub of medical colleges and hospitals, we readily went there,” said a relative of the patient, Nihal Chougule (20).

“They charged us ₹20,000 as deposit per person. We all got admitted on April 27 early morning. On May 1, our grandmother, Saraswati Aba Ghule (60), passed away and they asked us to pay ₹2,75,000 more. When we asked for details, they had charged the rest of us with same amount as that of our grandmother whom they claimed they had ventilated,” said Krishna Ghule (20) who was admitted with his younger brother Shubham (17) and mother Vaishali (36), at Apexcare Hospital.