Two incidents happened which has almost ensured that I am never going back to Artemis.

They don’t care about the customer’s time

I have been having a pretty severe pain in my wrist and needed to visit an Orthopedic. I went to Artemis and sat at their OPD registration desk. They told me that Dr. Hegde is on call, and I can have an appointment with him. I said, that is fine. Then as he tried to book the appointment, he told me that Dr. Hegde will only be available after one hour, and so I had to wait. Since I didn’t have the time I told him not to bother and I will come back another day (as I can’t wait for an hour). Then he told me to wait while he got on the phone. Then he said, a doctor will see me now. He said another doctor who is an associate of Dr. Hegde’s will be able to see me. Since, I was only there for a preliminary diagnosis, I didn’t care and told him that it is alright. Incidentally, this doctor wasn’t even listed in their doctors’ database, and the appointment was made in the name of Dr. Hegde.

Never mind, I said to myself; I made the payment and off I went to look for this doctor. Now here’s the kicker. I still had to wait in this doctor’s office (there were no other patients) FOR ONE HOUR. This is after I told them that I had more important things to do and I can not wait for an hour. It all went downhill from there. I couldn’t leave as I had paid already and every visit to the registration desk yielded a he’s-just-coming response. I would have expected that after waiting for an hour, Dr. Hegde will show up; but no, it was his ‘associate’. If ever, a doctor has not looked like a doctor, it was this time. In any case, all this guy did was hold my wrists for a minute or two, move it around, and then told me to go get an MRI.

That’s it.

Getting an MRI and how incompetent these people are

I went back to the OPD to see if I could get an MRI right then (I was already late), but I guess I was overly optimistic. There was no chance of that, so I left thinking that I will take an appointment and then come.

Well, a couple of days later when I did have the time, I called them up for an appointment. I asked and they gave me an appointment for the same day, and asked me to come sharply at the appointment time. Well, good I thought. Since that would mean I wouldn’t have to waste my time.

I got to the hospital almost on time, and went to their diagnostics desk. For almost 10 minutes, nothing happened. This is a private hospital, they charge a lot of money for their services, and they are still understaffed? The guy who was holding the prescription just didn’t do anything about it for 10 minutes. He just kept yapping on one phone call after another.

In any case, when I got a little pissed, he started looking for my appointment details, and then told me that I don’t have an appointment. I said that’s impossible, since I had confirmed the appointment on phone. He then looked and found out that I had been given an appointment for the next day. Once again, this was a sheer waste of my time.

I told him to cancel my appointment for the next day and left. Of course, I still haven’t got an MRI done on my wrist, as it seems that there are not enough MRI machines in Gurgaon and too many people need to get an MRI done, so there’s always a queue.