The biggest challenge the state government faces in the health-care sector is ensuring patients’ access to doctors at government-run hospitals, a senior health department official said on Friday.
West Bengal has for long witnessed patients being denied admission in government-run hospitals and referred to other hospitals, and doctors staying away from work. Now, the health department is trying to find a way to address the issues, said the official.
“We want to focus on public health issues, telemedicine facilities and accessibility of patients to doctors. Government hospitals have infrastructure and personnel, but still every day we receive complaints of patients not getting access to treatment,” the official said.
There have been several recent instances of inaccessibility.
In one case, said an official, a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest was taken to a medical college.
“The patient was taken within the golden hour, which means he could have been revived with medical intervention. However, the 50-year-old man was referred to another medical college. He had died by the time a third medical college agreed to admit him,” the official said.
“The man was the sole earning member of his family.”
In another case, a man from Nadia had come to a government medical college in Kolkata with gangrene in one of his legs.
“The doctors in the emergency ward did not admit him. The man finally got admitted to a private nursing home and had to sell land and jewellery to fund the treatment," said the official.
The health department, he said, was drawing up a plan to take action against the two hospitals and to address the issue.
“The state government has set up superspeciality hospitals in districts and also improved infrastructure at other hospitals. Still, critical patients continue to be denied treatment,” said the official.
Not just critical patients, others too are being denied access to health care.
A resident of Kalyani in Nadia district, a cardiac patient, went to a government medical college in Kolkata for a consultation with a cardiologist at the outpatient department.
“He went to the hospital for five days but could not meet a doctor. He was turned away,” said his mother.
A senior doctor who heads a department at a medical college in Kolkata said the administration was equally at fault.
“There is no proper appraisal system for government doctors and therefore, there is almost no accountability,” the doctor said. “No one in the hospital administration or the health department tries to find out when a doctor is reporting for work and how long he or she is working,” he said.
Another senior doctor said doctors are hard to find in many departments of government hospitals.
"Vigil has to be stepped up. Otherwise, there will be no improvement. Now there is no basic system of checking attendance at most hospitals,” said the doctor.
According to him, many senior doctors in the government health-care sector set bad examples for their juniors by not staying enough hours at the hospital. They instead prefer to treat patients at private facilities, the senior doctor said. "This has become a tradition," he said.
The Telegraph has recently reported that the health department is drawing up disciplinary action against five government doctors for working at private hospitals despite receiving non-practising allowance.
Disciplinary proceedings have been started against four surgeons at a government hospital in Malda and a doctor at a government hospital in Murshidabad for allegedly being engaged in private practice without the government’s permission.
In an advisory issued in November, the health department had told private hospitals and nursing homes to submit a copy of the no-objection certificate issued by the department to each government doctor working there.
The private hospitals have also been asked to provide certain details about each such doctor so that the health department can keep track of doctors treating patients under the Swasthya Sathi scheme.
