Health sector veterans have called for an overhaul of the private health industry's salary structure and prescribed an upper ceiling on doctors' salaries to check the spiralling cost of medical care.
Just as the nurses, the doctors too should have a fixed maximum salary, said B. Ekbal, national convener of the People's Health Movement in India (Jana Swasthya Abhiyan).
Speaking to The Hindu on Monday, Dr. Ekbal wondered why the private hospital managements started worrying about rising expenses only when they were asked to pay minimum wages to the nurses and other staff.
“Neurosurgeons, neurologists, cardiothoracic surgeons, cardiologists, urologists, and radiologists demand salaries ranging between Rs.3 lakh and Rs.4 lakh a month,” said P.G.R. Pillai, Dean, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology. Many such specialists demanded huge salaries at the entry level itself, he said.
A health-care specialist, who did not want to be named, said that approximately 70 per cent of the income generated in a hospital was spent on salaries and incentives for doctors. If this situation did not change, it would be difficult for small and medium-sized hospitals to survive. But they should survive as they were the caregivers for the poorer sections of society, he said.
“It is a disgrace for a doctor to die rich,” said Dr. Ekbal, quoting the Mayo Clinic founders and pointed out that even without the huge incentives they received by prescribing unnecessary diagnostic procedures, the doctors could have a reasonably good standard of living.
The rise in salary levels for doctors has been rapid. “About six to seven years ago, specialist doctors were paid in the range of Rs.50,000 to Rs.1 lakh,” said Dr. Pillai. “A general surgery used to cost about Rs.10,500 about seven years ago. Now it costs anything between Rs.80,000 and Rs.1 lakh.”
The government should intervene and hold a comprehensive review of the working of the health sector in the State, a veteran of the hospital sector said.
M.J. Kuruvilla, public health analyst and lawyer, who was formerly a medical surgeon, blamed the education and training system in the country for the situation.
