VIJAYAWADA: Doctors’ recruitment in government hospitals across the state has become doubtful after the state decided to lease out district hospitals and AP Vaidya Vidhana Parishad hospitals in a phased manner to corporate hospitals. Chittoor Government General Hospital (CGGH) has been given to Apollo Group on lease and is experiencing difficulties, as the staff have no specific instructions as to under whom they have to function.
The government has not given any clarity on the same so far. It was mentioned that this lease would be in the form of an attachment to Apollo Medical College for 33 years, which might be extended. Health minister Dr. Kamineni Srinivas declared recently that some more hospitals would head for such an attachment mode shortly. Principal secretary (health and family welfare) Poonam Malakondaiah stated that the government wanted to refine the recruitment process.
In fact, majority of district general hospitals have been facing dearth of doctors, staff nurses, paramedical staff and Class-IV employees for a long time, despite the health minister ‘assuring’ that doctors’ recruitment would take place soon. In fact, 40 nurse posts, 99 Class-IV employee posts, 30 paramedical and around 100 doctors positions’ were vacant. Meanwhile, the state government arrived at an agreement with Apollo Group of hospitals to develop the Chittoor Government General Hospital (CGGH), and this CGGH will be an attachment to the Apollo Medical College.
“As per the guidelines of Medical Council of India (MCI), a medical college should have a hospital as an attachment, and accordingly, the state government arrived at an MoU with Apollo for 33 years,” Ms Malakondaiah said and added that Apollo group is supposed to develop the institution in aspects like infra, any further recruitments as per the requirements, human resource and maintenance.
“Other than this, they have no role in the management,” she clarified. Agreeing to the apprehensions of doctors’ community, she said she would be visiting CGGH to provide clarity on the guidelines as to whose directions they have to follow.
Lack of clarity in duty allocation hits hospitals:
With no clarity in allocation of duty and rising friction between the state staff and corporate personnel, Chittoor hospital has gone into a non-performing state. The state officials have been saying that they have taken the Union government’s permission to alter the system. It is learnt that the corporates who were given the lease are recruiting doctors and the government has no role to play in it.
Already several hospitals in the state, including that in the Capital region, are short-staffed and the government is sitting on the recruitment issue. Many government hospitals are also not receiving required medicines. All these are an indication of government hospitals becoming referral hospitals to the corporates, according to doctors. However, the principal secretary (Health and Family Welfare) Poonam Malakondaiah has clearly stated that the corporate body can’t play any role in the management of the government hospital to which the private medical college is attached.
They can’t disturb the existing pattern and staff or personnel, she said and added that the corporate bodies are supposed to extend their services towards value addition only. During a recent visit to Chittoor, health minister Dr Kamineni Srinivas said that the government is ready to have MoUs with private medical colleges. “If such is the case, many government hospitals in the district headquarters can become attachments to the private or corporate medical colleges, which in long turn hamper the social responsibility of the structure of the government”, Dr Ambati Naga Radhakrishna, co-chairman, PCC Doctors’ Cell felt.
Lambasting the move of the government, he alleged that this system in a long urn will affect the functioning of the Out Patient wings in the hospitals. The PCC Doctors Cell co-chairman also expressed doubt that these government hospitals may become referral centres to the corporate hospitals in the days to come. “Guntur general hospital, which is in the Capital region is already under-staffed, and many others are also facing the same problem,” he said and questioned the government as to why it is delaying recruitment. In case, the Government don’t have plan ‘B’, it should have initiated the recruitment process by this time, Dr A N Radhakrishna observed.
