Healthcare conclave flags specialist doctors shortage, numbers lesser than needed
Telegraph | 6 December 2025
The common complaint that doctors in Calcutta do not give enough time to a patient can be blamed on the state not producing enough specialists, senior managers of several private hospitals said on Friday.
Gastroenterology, oncology, and high-end cardiology are some of the specialities that lack enough doctors compared to the demand.
Time constrain
A single doctor is engaged as a consultant in three hospitals and is not able to give enough time to a patient.
The problem can be solved if there are more specialists, as hospitals would then employ a doctor and not engage them as a consultant.
“As a state, we still lack enough specialists. The number of MBBS seats has gone up significantly in the past few years, but some speciality departments still lack adequate doctors,” Prashant Sharma, managing director of Charnock Hospital, said on the sidelines of a healthcare conclave organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
“Many hospitals engage specialist doctors as consultants. One consultant travels between two or three hospitals in a day. If there are OPDs scheduled in two hospitals on the same day, how much time can the doctor give to a patient? This is the root of most complaints,” said Sharma, also the chairman of the CII’s eastern region healthcare taskforce.
Crunch in specialists
The shortage is more acute in some of the specialities.
Rupak Barua, the managing director and chief executive officer of Woodlands Hospital, said the shortage was more pronounced in “gastroenterology, neurology, structural cardiology, oncology and for transplant surgeries”.
About 5,000 hospital beds will be added in the city’s private healthcare sector over the next five to seven years,he said.
A hospital needs both infrastructure and trained manpower. “If enough specialist doctors are not available, the trend of hiring consultants will continue,” said Barua, the vice-chair of CII’s West Bengal State Council.
The hospital executives said even tier II cities needed specialist doctors.
Strained city units
Most hospitals in subdivisional towns or district headquarters outside Calcutta provide basic services or a few speciality services. As a result, patients who need more specialised treatment come to Calcutta. The larger private hospitals in Calcutta are overburdened and overwhelmed with patients.
“If people in the districts are satisfied with the treatment they get in hospitals in their hometowns, they will not come to Calcutta. This will be possible only if the state has so many specialist doctors that some of them go to the districts,” said an official.
Steps to increase seats
A senior official of the state health department said increasing speciality seats was a continuous process, and the state government has been working on it.
“Bengal used to have about 700 speciality seats 15 years ago. It has now increased to 2,200. We plan to increase the seats further,” the official said.
Nurse model
Officials of private hospitals cited the progress made in producing more nurses as a template.
Earlier, hospitals in the state faced an acute shortage of trained nurses. But over the past few years, many nursing colleges have been set up with a public-private partnership.
“The state now has an adequate number of nurses,” one hospital official said.