PGIMS ‘borrows’ specialist doctors for MCI inspection

Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, May 11

In a stop-gap arrangement aimed at saving their face before the Medical Council of India (MCI) team which is slated to inspect the local PGIMS in the coming days, the institute authorities have “borrowed” specialist doctors from the state Health Department.

On the request of the PGIMS Director, the state health authorities have ordered as many as 30 specialist doctors, including Deputy Civil Surgeons, Senior Medical Officers (SMOs) and Medical Officers (MOs), to join the PGIMS with immediate effect. A communiqué sent to Civil Surgeons of 14 districts on Sunday maintained that the said doctors should be relieved on Sunday afternoon.

The government move has put the health authorities in a quandary as the state-run health facilities are already facing an acute shortage of specialist doctors. In the given situation, shifting of specialist doctors to the PGIMS will hit the health services at several general hospitals and community health centres.

Sources in the Health Department further point out that only last month, the state government had posted as many as 17 SMOs/MOs from the state health facilities to Shaheed Hasan Khan Mewati (SHKM) Government Medical College, Nalhar (Mewat), and 10 SMOs/MOs to BPS Government Medical College for Women, Khanpur Kalan (Sonepat).

“Deficiency of doctors as per the inspection report of the MCI” was cited as the reason behind the move in the orders dated April 17.

“The authorities of the state medical colleges do not fill the vacant posts of specialist doctors/consultants on a regular basis as per the MCI norms. Every time an MCI team is slated to inspect the medical colleges for grant/renewal of approval, they borrow doctors from the state Health Department as a stop-gap arrangement,” said sources.

Rohtak PGIMS officiating director Dr KB Gupta conceded that the HCMS doctors were being brought to the institute to fulfil the requirements as per the MCI norms as well as to ensure patient care.

However, the authorities of the PGIMS as well as the state Health Department had no explanation for the grave inconvenience faced by the patients at the grassroots level due to the reduction in the number of already insufficient specialist doctors at district/block level.

About one-third posts of doctor at the state-run health facilities are lying vacant. Of the nearly 3,000 sanctioned posts of doctor in the state, only 1,800 are occupied. Even of these, the specialist doctors constitute a small number.