The 150-year-old Victorian structure that houses Masina Hospital in Byculla may seem incongruously gracious for its present purpose, but as the palace of David Sassoon (the leader of the Jewish community here in Mumbai), as it originally was, it must have served as a fine dwelling indeed.
Sassoon gifted the palace — now the hospital — to a doctor couple named, Dr Hormusji M Masina and Dr (Mrs) Jerbai H Masina in early the 20th century.
There’s another thing that doesn’t sit right with the elegantly appointed façade of the hospital — the current financial mess it has found itself into.
Google “Masina Hospital” and the first 10 of the 11 search results that show up are all about non-payment of salaries to the hospital staff, strikes and so on. The medical director of the hospital, Dr Rohinton Dastur says the institution has accumulated losses of nearly `21 crore over the last 15 years.
And yet, Masina has a series of illustrious firsts to its name as well. It was the city’s first private hospital. It was also the first in the city to get an X-ray machine, the first to get a magnetic resonance imagining (MRI) machine and even today, it is the only private hospital in Mumbai with a tertiary care psychiatry ward.
And every medical practitioner in Mumbai will concede that Masina has unarguably, the best centre for burns treatment.
The problems that have kept Masina in the news erupted in June 2011, when the hospital wanted to go in for a tie-up with Apollo Labs to run its own pathological lab and blood bank. But the collaboration never saw fruition, and it ended prematurely. The Masina administration then approached SRL Ranbaxy laboratories for a possible collaboration. SRL agreed — but only to run the pathological lab and not the blood bank.
Dr Dastoor recounts, “After talks with Apollo ended, we approached SRL. They agreed to collaborate for the pathology lab but not the blood bank. We agreed. SRL placed an officer of theirs in our lab to oversee the day-to-day affairs. From day one, the staff refused to cooperate with the SRL appointed official, Dr Richa Agarwal. In about a week’s time, they actually chased her out of the hospital’s main gate. The lab was being run in an autocratic manner and with the collaboration, we wanted to change things for better. No one was being sacked or suspended. Everything was made clear to the Masina employees. And, yet they were hostile. It was unnerving.”
Following the almost violent reaction to the collaboration and SRL withdrawing itself from Masina, the management had to suspend the nine employees of the path lab and shut pathological operations. The closing down of the pathological lab aggravated the already existing financial crunch, leading to non-payment of bonuses and a delay in the payment of salary. This in turn compelled the hospital staff to stage agitations from time to time.
The workers are broadly organised under two major unions, namely; Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s Kaamgar Sena and a Sharad Rao-led union. Of the two, Sharad Rao’s union is the one, which is recognised. However, even Rao’s union has not renewed its Union Settlement Agreement since 2010. Dr Dastoor says, “The unions are becoming greedy, well knowing that there are barely any means of revenue left in the hospital they are demanding 20 per cent bonus without ceiling. How are we going to do that when we are even struggling to disburse the salaries on time.”
The geographical location of the hospital also gives a glimpse into the decline of the hospital over a period of the time. Located almost in the heart of the island city, Byculla, the area comprises largely Muslim population, a lot of which is also economically disadvantaged. A highly-placed senior official from the hospital says, “At the risk of sounding classist — the people who come to the hospital are poor Muslims who can’t afford to pay for treatment. So there goes another potential source of revenue. And over a period of time we also have also witnessed the donations plummet. Except the Parsis, we barely have any other community or individual donating. That said, we do get some donation but they are such modest amounts that cannot effect structural, administrative changes. At best they can take care of a patient or two.”
The hospital that came into being more than 110 years ago with a modest 10 beds has 280 beds as on today, 180 resident doctors, and about 40 consulting doctors, 130 nurses and approximately 270 Class 4 employees.
The main monetary support to the hospital comes from donations. Though not updated in decades, the wall outside the medical director’s cabin has a list of donors. The last name engraved on the white marble is that of Pheroza Godrej and the sum mentioned in `50,000. “Even today Parsis are the only consistent donors, which has helped in some measures in a time when donations from other sources and individuals have reduced considerably,” says Dr Dastoor.
The employees however seem oblivious to the problems the hospital is straddled with. One of the workers, Ankush More had belligerently said at the time of the last agitation in the first week of October, “The management has been ‘pocketing’ our salaries, while we are asked to wait till the 15th of the month.”
However the other union, that of the MNS comes across as somewhat accommodating. MNS’ Kaamgar Sena’s general secretary Prashant Ishi says, not failing to claim his superiority over Mr Rao’s union, “It is the other union which is causing the unrest. We understand that the hospital is not passing through the best of phases. But then our kitchen needs to run too and families have to be fed. Which is why we along with the management approached the labour commissioner. But Mr Rao’s union, which has not even renewed its union settlement agreement, had no representation there. I’m going to move court to derecognise his union. We understand that we need to help the hospital not just run but aid them in generating revenue. And the collaboration with SRL was one such step.”
The accumulated losses run into 21 crores, but Dr Dastoor doesn’t seem to be taking that into account, as he maintains optimistically, “If I can kick-start the pathology lab and workers cooperate with me then I just need less than six month to break even and from there on I’m certain that we will eventually be in a position to revive the hospital.”
Raising his hand and pointing to another Victorian structure, which is not as old as the erstwhile palace of Sasoon, he adds, “We hate the rains, numerous parts of buildings leak. We will be able to revamp that structure as well.”