Patna, April 22: The state health department has written a letter to medical professionals in government services across the state asking them to register their feedback or complaints regarding service related matters through feedback column on department’s website and email. The move comes in a bid to ensure better communication between head administrators and doctors.

The initiative, however, has got a lukewarm response from doctors who feel their justified demands are not being met with for long and the move to go hi-tech is just a gimmick, sources in the department said. Very few doctors have taken the suggestion seriously and have written to the principal secretary of the department despite his repeated written and verbal suggestions in this regard. A similar suggestion was also given to doctors who are in the teaching profession in all the six medical colleges of the state through, individual letters to professors, associate and assistant professors.

“The objective behind this is to ensure that the principal health secretary gets closer to every doctor working for in government institutes and they could directly address their complaints and grievances on service-related issues. However, as it has turned out, there are very few takers of the move. One month has passed since the mail was sent to them, yet there have been very few responses,” a source close to principal secretary of the health department Amarjeet Sinha told The Telegraph.

Doctors, meanwhile, said though the gesture meant no harm, the idea of writing e-mails or posting complaints on health department’s website have not impressed the doctors as great deal.

“The initiative is good but not many doctors are ready to believe that using the net for genuine demands will bear a result, especially when our visits have failed to do so. If the department has to show an improvement, it is not only the principal secretary who will have to take doctor-friendly initiatives like these, the mindset of everyone else will have to change too,” said Dr Ajay Kumar, general secretary, Bihar Health Services Association.

He said: “About 3,000 doctors in the state are doing the work of about 10,000 doctors in the state. They are working under very unfavourable conditions. Salaries are not paid in time, administrative officials misbehave with them and bureaucrats and about 500 are missing out on assured career promotion due to a lackadaisical attitude of the state government.”

The health directorate is also very weak. Even our long pending demand to implement Medical Professional Protection Act has not been implemented yet.”