Bengal govt to appoint contractual specialist doctors to meet crisis in state-run hospitals

Kolkata, Aug 26 (IANS) The West Bengal Health Department is considering recruiting contractual specialist doctors from private hospitals in the state to fill the shortage of specialist doctors in state-run hospitals.

Some of the existing vacancies for specialist doctors in state-run medical entities will be filled by appointing doctors associated with the private healthcare sector on a contractual basis, said Health Minister Sharadwat Mukherjee, who is himself an acclaimed medical practitioner.

The announcement follows a notification from the State Health Department issued earlier barring specialist doctors from going for “private practice” from the day a patient is admitted to a government hospital under the supervision of that doctor.

This created ripples among a section of doctors associated with the state-run healthcare system. They claimed that there was already a shortage of specialist doctors in state-run hospitals, with many getting “admission days” even twice a week, which means that patients are admitted under their supervision for two days.

These doctors claimed that in such a situation, if the new guidelines come into effect, all these doctors will not get the opportunity to ‘private practice’ for six consecutive days. Probably to cool down the anguish of this faction of the medical fraternity, the state government announced the decision to recruit contractual specialist doctors.

According to the state health minister, the first priority will obviously be to fill up the vacant posts in the state-run medical entities. “However, even after that attempt, there might be some shortage of specialist doctors. This shortage will be met by appointing contractual specialist doctors from the private healthcare sector,” said the State Health Minister.

He also said that the state government’s immediate target is to achieve a situation where no single specialist doctor will have two “admission days” within a week. “This will relieve the pressure of work on doctors. There are many local doctors with postgraduate degrees in every district and sub-district level who are not associated with the government health sector. We will involve those doctors on a contractual basis, he added.

Welcoming the move, West Bengal Doctors Forum’s president, Dr Kaushik Chaki, said that if the expertise of private doctors in various medical fields reaches the common people, it will be positive for public health.

“However, this cannot be an alternative to permanent appointments. It is important to quickly identify all the vacancies in the health sector and appoint doctors, specialists, super specialists and health workers with transparency,” he added.

–IANS

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