Dr. Rita Mhaskar

My overall experience with Dr. Rita Mhaskar was good. She explained things clearly, and the clinic visit was smooth with only a five to ten minute wait. I would give the experience a five out of five rating.

An ex-colleague of mine recommended Dr. Rita Mhaskar as she had a successful delivery under her despite my colleague’s pregnancy being in the high risk zone. She was full of praises and said exactly the things about her that I’d want in my gynaec – patient listener, firm believer of non-intrusive treatment and one’s natural immunity, open minded and with a history of handling complex cases. I was new in Bangalore and didn’t know another gynaec here so I booked an appointment with her at Mhaskar’s Srishti Clinic in Teacher’s Colony, Koramangala as it was close by to my place. The appointment scheduling works this way – each patient is given a 15-minutes slot and Dr. Mhaskar calls her name when she’s ready for the patient and cleared all the patients who had booked appointments before her. Fair in a way, but she repeat-calls patients who missed their time slots and in a way inconveniencing patients who arrive on time. So I was at the clinic on time yet waiting over half an hour because patients who missed their time slots got another chance to sneak in. And, yes, I was a little annoyed at the functionality of meeting her appointments. However, much of that irritation disappeared when I met her. Her smile put it straight! I just informed her of my irregular menstrual symptoms, and she almost concluded it was a case of hypothyroidism combined with PCOD (Poly Cystic Ovarian Disorder). She prodded me for other symptoms that I was going through, and at the end of it all, she confirmed it’s what she suspected earlier. However, before putting me on any preventive medicines, she prescribed a few tests that had to be run through to reconfirm. We assumed the consultation was over and as my husband was about to get up and pull out his wallet from the back pocket, she looked over her glasses and said, “my consultation is Rs. 500”. We were thrown aback. Yes, we were about to pay and she could have most definitely avoided the conclusive statement after fathoming that were about to pay only! It would have been more befitting to the fame she had earned herself. Anyway, we paid the fees and walked out. Test reports were in and it was confirmed what she suspected which means she was indeed a doctor above par but not a great marketer. Or, she cares more about her fees than treating her patients with a little more finesse. That I quit consulting her and moved to Dr. Jaya Bhat is another story but a couple of years on, I recommended her to a friend of mine especially because Jaya Bhat would be off way for her. She came back to me saying, “Dr. Mhaskar is a great doc but don’t you think she cares a little more about her fees!”. There you go! Dr. Mhaskar is a great examiner and doctor and I have been at the good receiving end of her treatment but I feel she could be a little less vocal about issues that belittle her. She’s a doctor of a far greater status to get bothered by such trivialities.

The doctor explained everything clearly during the consultation. I had a good experience overall and would recommend Dr. Rita Mhaskar to others. I rated the experience as four out of five.

Even to this date I regret taking my wife to Dr. Rita Mhaskar. Dr. Rita helped us during initial stages of pregnancy really well. We had suggested her that we would always prefer to go for a normal delivery and would like to optimize for it. But she kept saying it is luck, nothing can be controlled by us. We did agree to it is true, but tried everything from our end - exercises, etc. My wife had a C-Section. The main reason for disappointment is not that, read on. Few days before the Expected Date of delivery, Dr. Rita was about to go for a wedding. We suggested we want my wife to get Labor pains and then we'd go to hospital. In case she gets labor pains while Dr. Rita is in her Vacation, we can go to another Doctor Meena Muthiah. Dr. Rita said that she wants to do the delivery and it will be good if she does it and she wants to do it before her Vacation. This was the primary breach of trust, as a Doctor you should allow your patients to decide whom you want to go to. She suggested us to go to Malathi Manipal and said that we have to Pay extra if her husband comes for delivery. Instead she took tests and suggested that we should go for an induced labor, we were against it again. But we went ahead because you know - You trust your doctor. I'm sad we did. We got admitted in Malathi Manipal, they gave injections for induced delivery, nothing happened. Everything was in phone conversation with Dr. Rita and the duty doctor. First time parents, we were worried. Next day, Dr. Arun - husband of Dr. Rita came in and did a checkup. He said, baby's heartbeat is low we need to do a C-Section and take out the baby. We are not doctors, and when someone is saying that your newborn baby is at risk - what would you do? Just do what the doctor says. So, we got what we didn't want. A C-Section, without the Gynecologist whom we were going to doing the surgery - who promised that getting a normal delivery before her vacation would ensure she would come. Dr. Rita just visited once in 3 days when we were admitted in Malathi Manipal. Later we took the reports of the heartbeat after my kid was born and we went to Dr. Meena, she did look at the ECG reports and said we could have waited. My heart skipped a beat. We were manipulated. We were manipulated to take decisions based on the Doctor's comfort, vacation plans and the intention to force patients to choose her and ended up with a planned C-Section which could very well have been a normal delivery. We had to also pay extra for Dr. Arun coming in as a Surgeon. Well done, trust lost. Based on my personal experience, whenever someone asks for a Gynecologist to me - first thing I ask is are you going to Dr. Rita? Please don't. She didn't justify what she initially set out to do for us.

We are consulting Dr. Rita for our third child. * ** ** Couple of things I have noted about her. - She makes you very comfortable. You can discuss anything with her. - She takes limited number of patients daily and spends enough time with each - Very disciplined and keep your complete history in the card that she keeps for herself. We are undisciplined in fact :-) - She gives a lot of flexibility and doesn't make a big deal about pregnancy by scaring you unnecessarily. - Above all she knows what is important and what's not.

The doctor has good qualifications ( having graduated from AIIMS etc..) which influenced our decision to seek her help. But what was annoying was a) an endless wait even after taking an appointment (we had taken an appointment of 9:20 am , the doc came at around 10:15 to the hospiital and we were called to see her at around 10:45 eventhough we had the first appointment. b)No individual attention. She nevèr tried to allay our fears and concernes, never answered our questions to our satisfaction. For some reason she was always in a hurry to finish the consultation within a minute or two. Add to this the confusion created by the assistant doctor who keeps asking quetions along side the doctor. I would never recommend her to anyone .