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Taking Blood Sample for Medical Tests

Healthians Service Review

PR Mitu Sharma introduced me to the Healthians Website via her mail thus:

I am addressing you on behalf of Healthians.com, India’s largest marketplace for Diagnostic Labs and hospitals that offer transparency in pricing, convenience and information in details about each medical test to help patients make informed decisions. The company aims to bring innovative disruption in $5Billion diagnostic market in India by empowering patients and expanding its network to make diagnostic healthcare service easily accessible and convenient for patients. Some of its unique proposition includes free home sample collections service by a vetted and certified sample collector, free report analysis by a doctor on call, lifetime storage of your lab reports online at no extra charges apart from offering lowest charges for lab test online.

Healthians Plus is another innovative technology play in healthcare space, it is a software developed by engineers and doctors that helps a proactive user to know their health score by answering simple lifestyle and habits questionnaire. The software not just helps to find the health score but keeps suggesting lifestyle changes and regular preventive checkups to stay healthier and happier.

The company was founded in April 2014 by Mr.Deepak Sahni, IT/Healthcare Marketing professional with over 10 years of experience. The company was incubated by Healthstart – a healthcare focused VC fund in November 2014.

The company has tied-up with diagnostic labs, hospitals, doctors and pharmacies to create a wide network of healthcare services. They are currently in association with more than 350 diagnostic labs including labs in the hospitals with focus in Delhi/NCR and presence in over 22 cities.

Healthians.com, through its unique approach of motivating people towards preventive healthcare and chronic disease management by timely and routine health checks, has serviced over 90,000 people and chasing to serve over 1 million people in next 6 months.

The board is embedded with experienced professionals from Healthcare industry and Medical practitioners, Physicians and Lab technicians’ holds years of experience in the field of Diagnostics and Preventive Health-Care management.

Healthians is also recognized as Indian E-retailer of the year Award 2015.

Blood Samples taken into Test Tubes

Blood Samples taken into Test Tubes

My Experience: I suggested a service review and we were in conversation about it for about 4 days. But nothing came out of it. Suddenly one day Deepa Sharma Mitu’s colleague from Promising PR contacted me with an authored article from the CEO of Healthians. Again I told her that I had requested for a service review for thyroid tests, since they pick up blood samples from home. She only asked where I live. She did not reply for a few days again and one day sent me a link to the website where I just had to type in my contact details and they would get back to me by phone.

I had requested their services for the coming Monday or Tuesday morning 8 O’clock since I was supposed to give them 2 options. I waited till Monday and no one called. Deepa gave me a call in the afternoon and I told her what had happened. She immediately contacted the concerned people and I got a call from their Gurgaon office. When they realised that I am based in Mumbai, the man told me that I would get a call from their Mumbai team. By 6-7 PM I did get a call from a girl, who wanted to confirm my contact details, but the call got disconnected again and again due to some problem in their system. Then a man from their team called at 8 PM and apologised to me that since he was on leave he could not get back to me sooner and promised for service the next day morning.

The next day a girl from the nearest Express Clinic visited my place for picking up the sample. The girl who had come to pick up the blood sample seemed to be inexperienced in the work. The reason I can say that is I have given blood samples many times before since the time I was diagnosed with hypothyroid. The girl first did not get a vein on my left arm, which was close to her. When she got one on my right arm and punctured it, instead of the blood going into the syringe some of it came outside. Then she twisted the syringe from side to side in search of blood, so that I began writhing in pain. Luckily the pain lasted only for some time. Then I was shocked when she told me she had to take some more blood. But she called up her senior to ask about it, when she was told that this was enough.

The point remains that a person maybe trained, but if the person uses the training properly then only it is worth it.

Since I needed test-reports for thyroid, I was told that the report would be sent the next day. On the website it is written that the report would be sent by email. The girl who came to pick up the blood sample also told me so. But I waited almost the entire of the next day for it. I never received the same. In the evening, I got a call from the branch from where the girl had come for the blood sample. The girl who called told me that they had been told to hand-deliver the report. I then told her I was expecting it by mail. She replied that she had already sent it by mail and she was sending someone for delivering the hard copy as well. Within 20 minutes the hard copy of the report was in my hands. But I never received it by mail at all.

I could very well have written the review and published it without any responsibility. But I thought it only right to inform Mitu about my experience, because she was the one in direct contact with the Management of Healthians and they were the right people who would not let my experience repeat with the other customers of the Healthians. She gave me a call and told me there were 2 options – either leave it at that or give them another chance because Healthians would soon be having more control of the Mumbai operations soon with more developments coming.

I don’t like to take or even give free service. So I told her we will have another round and I would be contacting them with some more test suggestions soon. Some medical tests were urgently needed for my parents. So I gave them the list and with the developments taking some time, almost one month later, Aishwarya Nayal from Healthians gave me a call to ask me regarding the tests. We discussed the right time for the technician to be present at our home to collect the blood samples, because according to her 2 of the tests – one for Dad and one for Mom – needed to be done during fasting. She said that the next day the technician would come at 7.30 in the morning since my parents – being senior citizens – would not be able to tolerate hunger. Then she shared 2 links from the site, so that I just had to order them.

As discussed with Aishwarya, I left a request for them to come the next day at 7.30 AM. I had to give a second option, which I gave for one day later. I got a call from Healthians to confirm the order and soon received 2 messages on my cell for the same. I happened to see these messages and they spelt our surname as Roa. I find this odd behaviour of people from Mumbai – I don’t know why this is happening – is it that they did not bother to educate themselves or shear carelessness, that they always misspell our surname? Either they say Roy or Roa. With increase in population, people take on all sorts of surnames and this could very well cause mistakes to happen if there happens to be a real Roy/Roa among the list of patients with them. This is one thing that people from everywhere should consider.

We waited from 7.30 in the morning the next day to 8. No one came! After 8 I got a call on my cell from a Suburban Lab technician that he was trying to find our house all the while. I asked him he could have given me a call then. He said that he got this number only then. I told him that my parents had taken their breakfast and there is no point in taking their blood samples then. He said then we would do it the next day. With no other alternative, I agreed.

Taking Blood Sample for Medical Tests
Taking Blood Sample for Medical Tests

I got a call from their office after some time and they said that the man was calling on a different number. But the man had said he got my number late. That got me wondering again I had left only my official number (only one, which I always use for these purposes) on the Healthians’ site. Then how would they have got a different number. There is a big communication gap in their system. Not only did they make my parents wait for the service, but also they were giving irrelevant excuses for not being able to serve properly. My Mom is a diabetic. If the sugar goes down, we might have to admit her in hospital. I had told Aishwarya about these problems the day before. But still this happened. I wrote to Mitu immediately about what had happened.

Having informed Mitu worked and the next day the technician arrived promptly at 8.30 as they had told. Apparently, Healthians must had intervened and sorted out the issue. The man, Mukhtar Ahmad, is a through professional. He not only used gloves while taking the blood sample, when he was done he even used hand sanitizer to clean his hands. He used disposable syringes from where he filled test tubes directly from the vein, instead of filling the syringes and then emptying them into test tubes. This looked interesting and different. Regarding the reports the man was a little confused – would it have to be sent by email or hand-delivered – because this was the first time he got to interact with patients from Healthians.

By evening Aishwarya had shared the 2 reports by mail and later the hard copies were even hand delivered to our home. She also arranged for a call from Dr. Vandana Gulati the next day to explain the reports. The good doctor patiently listened to my ranting about my concerns regarding my parents’ health and suggested possible solutions.

And I need to inform the Healthians that if they cannot keep up with timings like 7.30 AM, they should remove the option of any such time in the request form.

Price: TSH, T3 and T4 – Rs.550/-; Glycosylated Haemoglobin (HBA1C) and Serum Calcium – Rs.1050/- and CBC, Serum Iron and Serum Creatinine – Rs.1020/-.

About Gayatri T Rao

A double post-graduate (MSc. - Botany and MA - English Literature) Gayatri T Rao is a Senior Multimedia Journalist with vast experience in writing on varied topics.

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One comment

  1. This is fraud company, their executive is non educated, even they don’t know the difference between fasting and random blood sugar. don’t go with him. they don’t care about person health. they do the false commitment. they make the false report. they make the report without testing. sometime you will see in his report false testing report. so if you don’t care about your health then go there. don’t go their if you don’t want to live then go their. otherwise always go to there where you can get accurate report. they are big fraud and fraud company

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