Hindustan Times: Mumbai: Wednesday,
March 01, 2017.
Responding to
a query filed under Right to Information Act, the municipal health department
revealed that 108 senior medical officers and medical officers from the hospitals
such as Rajawadi, Ghatkopar, K B Bhabha, V N Desai and others, have been
working in the same establishment for 3 to 20 years.
Over 100
doctors from 16 municipal hospitals of Mumbai have refused to follow the
three-year transfer rule.
Responding to
a query filed under Right to Information Act, the municipal health department
revealed that 108 senior medical officers and medical officers from the
hospitals such as Rajawadi, Ghatkopar, K B Bhabha, V N Desai and others, have
been working in the same establishment for 3 to 20 years.
According to
the employee transfer policy laws of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation,
doctors are supposed to be transferred to a different medical facility every
three years. The rules also state that a civic-run establishment should
transfer 25% of their working staff every three years.
Health
activists said that the delay in transfer works against the patients’ welfare
and quality of care because the doctors, working in same establishment for a
long time form a well-oiled nexus with pharmacies and diagnostic laboratories
that offer kickbacks for referrals.
“Despite the
fact that Medical Council of India (MCI) has asked doctors from civic
facilities to prescribe generic drugs to the patients, many of these doctors
usually prescribe branded drugs, which are available at pharmacies outside the
hospital. Even for the diagnostic tests, they as patients to go to certain
laboratories. The transfer policy can break this nexus,” said Chetan Kothari,
the RTI applicant.
The BMC norms
also state that the establishment should create a list of employees who have
completed three years of service in April month and submit the same with their
head of the department.
Dr Arun
Gadre, a health activist said that while the doctor is only a cog in the system
of kickbacks, transfer of doctors makes sure the nexus doesn’t grow stronger.
“If the doctors are transferred regularly, it breaks the chain of comfort and
familiarity with the certain pharmacies and private radiologists and in turn
patients are benefitted because they can avail more services from the civic set
up,” said Dr Gadre.
“Something
that is bigger than the kickbacks is that of inflow and outflow of patients
between the civic facilities and their own private hospitals,” said a doctor on
the condition of anonymity. “Many doctors from BMC have received notices and
faced action for working in private hospitals and they continue to use civic
facilities for patients from their own private hospitals which are usually in
the vicinity of the civic hospital,” he added.
Dr P Jadhav,
chief medical superintendent of periphery hospitals refused the statistics and
said that the number couldn’t be more than a handful. “We keep doing internal
transfers of the doctors according to the norms. It’s not possible that they
have stayed at one place for decades,” said Jadhav.
Executive
health officer Dr Padmaja Keskar and additional municipal commissioner (health
department) IA Kundan, remained unavailable for comments.
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