Most awarded hospital

Dr Keki B. Grant, the spry octogenarian founder, chairman and managing trustee of the Grant Medical Foundation which runs Poona’s Ruby Hall Clinic (RHC) was presented the prestigious Lifetime Achie­ve­ment Award by GE Healthcare on March 14, 2008 at The Hyatt Regency hotel in Bom­bay. RHC also featured in the final nominations in two other categories of The Modern Medicare Excellence Award 2007 – Administrator of the Year 2007: Bomi Bhote, CEO; and Hall of Fame 2007: Ruby Hall Cancer Centre. These awards are in recognition of the phenomenal work done by individuals, hospitals and non-medical institutions within the healthcare industry, as notes a brochure of the Grant Medical Foundation.

Dr Keki Grant: pheno-menal work

Making it to the final nominations in two categories of the Express Healthcare Excellence Awards of March 28, 2008, RHC was listed as a finalist for the "most inspirational workplace” as well as the "overall best hospital of the year” in the non-corporate sector. Founded as a three-bed nursing home in 1959, RHC has today progressed to a 550-bed, multi-specialty hospital. Grant started his hospital, now worth Rs 800 crore, with nothing in his pocket 50 years ago. He had gone from bank to bank for a loan but could not get one because he was poor. He then approached a bank manager whose mother was a patient and got the money without any collateral. Years later when he asked the man what prompted him to take that decision Grant was told: "I liked your face. Also because you are a Parsi and Parsis never cheat.”

The most recent among the many records to RHC’s credit is the removal of a huge tumor through laparoscopic surgery by a team of surgeons at the hospital. The enormous 13.5 cm adrenal tumor weighing 410 g was removed from a 36-year-old man, reported The Times of India (TOI) dated May 21, 2008. This is the first time a growth of this size has been removed through laparoscopy, it is claimed. The surgeons, Drs Shashank Shah, Jayshree Todkar and Sanjay Ambagade have applied to the Guinness Book of World Records to have their surgical feat recorded, TOI informs.

The patient, who weighed a massive 135 kg, came in complaining of severe abdominal pain, intermittent vomiting and restlessness. "We found a huge tumor just below the liver and above the kidney,” said Ambagade. Open surgery was ruled out because of the patient’s weight as "the post-operative management would have been difficult” and laparos­copy was decided on even though the largest tumor removed by this method until then had been 9.5 cm, the TOI reported.