Doctors flag referral woes and vacancies before State Level Grievance Redressal Committee
Telegraph | 13 February 2025
These were among the issues flagged on Tuesday before the State Level Grievance Redressal Committee, which has been set up to hear doctors’ suggestions and complaints.
The committee members visited two medical colleges in Calcutta during the day. They have been visiting medical colleges since January to speak to senior and junior doctors, nurses and officials.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will address a doctors’ convention on February 24. This is the first time Mamata will meet doctors at a convention since the rape and murder of a postgraduate medic at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9 sparked statewide protests, that led to a ceasework and hunger strike by junior medics.
The committee is visiting government medical colleges to list the suggestions and complaints of doctors and nurses. A report will be handed to the chief minister, said a member.
“Many faculty positions at government medical colleges are vacant. There are not enough doctors given the number of patients in the OPD and indoor wards. Recruitments have not taken place for months. This was communicated to the committee,” said a senior doctor at Medical College Kolkata, one of the two medical colleges the panel members visited on Tuesday.
“There is hardly any permanent Group D employee in the medical colleges. Many of the contractual Group D employees are not serious about their jobs. If they are hauled up for not doing their job properly, they quit citing their salary and saying they won’t do anything more,” said a senior doctor at NRS Medical College and Hospital, the other institution the grievance redressal committee visited on Tuesday.
Group D employees push trolleys carrying patients, take patients for pathological tests and bring them back to the ward, and ferry samples to laboratories, among other work.
In the absence of enough Group D staff, doctors and nurses often ask patients’ relatives to do the job. This leads to altercations, said a hospital administrator.
A junior doctor at Medical College Kolkata said they wanted to know during Tuesday’s interaction about the future of the central referral system, which was launched as a pilot project in October but is yet to take off across the state.
“There was a time when display boards at least showed the number of vacant beds. Even that has stopped. When will this begin in full swing,” a junior doctor asked while speaking to The Telegraph.
He said they had raised the question at the meeting with the committee members but did not get any response.
The central referral system was meant to ensure that a government hospital referred a patient to another state-run facility only if the latter had a vacant bed and the facilities to treat the patient.
Before referring a patient, a doctor has to log into a portal and check whether the hospital where the patient would be sent has a vacant bed.
Once the second hospital confirms a vacant bed, a ticket number is generated and the patient is asked to go there.
A junior doctor at Medical College Kolkata said the committee members told them that the meeting with the chief minister may not be interactive. The members, he and others were told, were speaking to the doctors and other staff so the chief minister could know their stand before the convention.
Sourav Datta, the chairperson of the State Level Grievance Redressal Committee, which was set up during the protests over the RG Kar rape and murder, refused to comment on what transpired during the interactions.
“I will not say anything about what the doctors told the committee. We have been visiting medical colleges since January. Doctors working at the block level and at the district hospitals are coming to the medical colleges during these interactions,” said Datta, a head and neck surgeon at a private hospital in the city.
Besides Datta, the committee has an official from Swasthya Bhavan, the headquarters of the state health department, and faculty members from at least two medical colleges.
The chief medical officer of health in the respective districts is also attending the meetings, sources said.
“We will cover all the districts and then prepare a report. The report will be handed to the appropriate authority,” Datta said.
Abhishek Banerjee, the Diamond Harbour MP and the all-India general secretary of the Trinamool Congress, had addressed a doctors’ convention in Diamond Harbour, South 24-Parganas, last November. Over one thousand doctors attended the meeting.
The committee will visit Diamond Harbour Medical College on Tuesday. The members will also meet doctors of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation on Tuesday.