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.

All of the major hospitals and clinics in Gurgaon now have an ultrasound facility. Here are the ones that we have been to:

Apollo Clinic – there is usually a very long wait at the Apollo Clinic. First of all, you need to have an appointment, but despite the appointment, you may have to wait for a couple of hours. This is a result of mismanagement and also the fact that they have only one machine, so sometimes it needs to be used in emergency cases ahead of the appointment holders.

The waiting area is also quite cramped and small.

Max Hospital – we have used this one a couple of times. Once again, like all hospitals, this also gives preference to emergency cases. My wife had to go in once with an emergency, and she was able to get it done immediately.

Another time when she called for an appointment, she was told that there was no slot available for 3 days. The overall feel of the place is however better than Apollo.

Artemis Hospital – this is of course a super speciality center with state of the art facilities. The best thing about Artemis is that they have two independent Ultrasound rooms, and so there is always plenty of availability and you usually get an appointment without too much wait.

The one thing bad about Artemis is that, they are not sensitive to providing same gender doctor by default. My wife has visited the place multiple times, and once she was assigned a male doctor for a pregnancy ultrasound. We didn’t have a big problem with that, but I imagine a lot of people may have. The biggest thing is that, when we took the appointment, a lady doctor was mentioned on the actual appointment, but a male doctor was assigned instead.

All these big hospitals have one flaw however – they have a staff of doctors who operate the facility. So, there is no guarantee of getting the same doctors every time you go there.

Our Best Experience has been at a different facility altogether. We highly recommend a clinic called the Ultrasound Clinic (not very original, I know), which is run by one Dr. Girish Pandit. He is one of the most highly recommended doctors and we were referred to him from multiple gynecologists. He specializes in pregnancy related ultrasounds. The best thing about this place is that the Doctor himself is a very nice person, and has the quality which puts you at ease.

The clinic is located in Qutab Enclave market in DLF Phase I. You can only get in by appointment, but the good thing is that the appointments times are usually met, so you don’t have to wait too long.

If you have had any experiences with Ultrasounds in Gurgaon, please leave a comment.