Patna: AIIMS-Patna will start cardiology, urology and endocrinology outpatient departments from August this year. The three super-speciality departments didn't have a single doctor earlier.

In a fresh recruitment drive in which AIIMS got 12 faculty members on contract, all three departments have now got one faculty member each.

AIIMS-Patna director Dr Prabhat Kumar Singh said one doctor each would join the three departments within a month.

"A lot of cardiac and urology related cases used to come up at our hospital. While the medicine department doctor used to see cardiac cases in his outpatient department, the major cardiac and urology cases were referred to Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) because of not having a specialist. Around 60 cases of urology alone used to come up in the surgery department's OPD. Starting of the three OPDs will be a boon for patients," said a senior doctor of AIIMS-Patna.

Sources said the transfusion medicine department of the hospital (under which the blood bank runs), which didn't have a single faculty member, too, got a faculty member.

Other departments that have got doctors in the recruitment include medicine, anaesthesia and others.

The trauma and emergency facility is likely to be completed by the first week of August. Officials of HLL Lifecare Ltd (company involved in the AIIMS-Patna interiors, electrification and other works) had conveyed this to Union health secretary Preeti Sudan on Monday who had visited the hospital to review the work progress.

Postgraduate medical course might be started at AIIMS-Patna soon. "Union health secretary Preeti Sudan had called up AIIMS-Delhi director Dr Randeep Guleria during her visit to the hospital and had assured AIIMS-Patna authorities that postgraduate courses would be started at the institute by December," said a source.