Cash-for-bed allegations on Medical College Kolkata: Panel wants patients' feedback
Telegraph | 8 November 2024
A committee that is investigating allegations that patients have to pay to get a bed at Medical College Kolkata has recommended that all inpatients be asked whether anyone approached them for money to get them admitted to the government-run facility, officials at the hospital said.
The committee, however, has not found any evidence of patients’ families paying for a bed at the hospital, the officials said.
The 11-member committee — with senior and junior doctors, and interns as members — was formed after several junior doctors complained to the authorities of Medical College Kolkata that patients’ families were being forced to pay to get them admitted.
The junior doctors lodged the complaint during their protest over the rape and murder of a colleague at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9.
The probe committee submitted its report to the hospital authorities on Thursday.
“We will deliberate on the findings and the recommendations at a meeting on Monday,” a senior official at Medical College Kolkata said.
The committee has recommended a three-level check for the patients getting admitted.
“A patient feedback form has to be kept with the bed ticket and every patient or family member has to mandatorily fill in the form. It will have several questions, including whether they had to pay to get a bed or whether someone had approached them for money,” the official said.
In the first level of the check, the doctor examining a patient in the Emergency department will ask whether there was any demand for money. In the second level, the question will be asked by treating doctors in the ward, such as the doctor in charge of the unit concerned.
In the final round, the patient will be asked the same question by the on-duty senior nurse.
Allegations that touts charge money from patients’ families to arrange a bed for them are common at government medical colleges in the city. Several alleged touts were arrested at medical colleges at various times.
“If a patient is admitted on someone’s recommendation, that too will be recorded in the feedback form. If we find that an individual has recommended many patients for admission, we can assume the person has some ulterior motive. The matter will then be probed,” the official said.
The committee has also recommended that boards with the message that no money needs to be paid for a bed be put up at strategic points across the hospital, including the Emergency department, admission counters and outpatient department (OPD) clinics.
A patient is admitted either after a visit to the Emergency or after a consultation in the OPD.
The boards will also display the message that anyone approached for money should lodge a complaint with the medical superintendent of the hospital, drop the complaint into a designated box or email it to an address mentioned in the message.
The recommendations include a real-time display of vacant bed status, which the state government has launched but is yet to become fully functional.
The Telegraph has reported how patients are still running from one hospital to another in search of a bed despite the launch of the online patient referral system and bed vacancy display.
“The allegations made by the junior doctors were serious. They said general beds as well as critical care beds were being sold for money. If that is true, it will erode people’s faith in the government healthcare system. So we formed the probe committee,” a senior official at Medical College Kokata said.
But no one came forward with a complaint that they had to pay for a bed, said the official.
Sources said the committee met thrice — on October 5, 23, and 30 — but received no complaints. The officer in charge of the police outpost at the hospital, too, said cops did not receive any such complaint, the sources said.