The taluk hospitals and two community and primary health centres each in every district in the State will be taken up for infrastructural upgrading and quality improvement programmes under the Kerala Accreditation Standard for Hospitals (KASH), a State-level initiative, Health Minister V.S. Sivakumar has said.
Addressing the media here on Friday, he said in the capital district, all 19 Community Health Centres would be brought under the KASH initiative by March 31.
The government intended to extend the KASH accreditation to all government hospitals in phases. Select hospitals would undergo a quality improvement drive by offering better amenities to patients, implementing better patient care and management systems, standard treatment protocols and procedures, good infection control policies, etc., so as to meet the accreditation norms under KASH.
Mr. Sivakumar said the referral protocols piloted in four major departments in the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital seemed to be showing good results with a reduction in the number of patients in the OP clinics.
The back referral system also seemed to be working very well, he said.
Doctors appointed
As part of resolving the shortage of doctors in government hospitals, the government had till date appointed 768 Assistant Surgeons from the PSC list and another 518 were being appointed on contract through the National Rural Health Mission. All doctors on the current rank lists would be appointed. Steps had been initiated for emergency recruitment of doctors through the PSC. Over 6,000 doctors had applied for the same and the interview process was on and all selected would be included in a reserve list.
The government had also created 210 new posts of Assistant Surgeons. The vacancies of 135 specialist doctors would be filled by taking the option from doctors from the PSC list.
Mr. Sivakumar said that all vacancies of doctors in the State, except 18 vacancies in Kasaragod, had been filled.
He said that the salaries of Ayurveda and Homoeo doctors appointed on contract through the NRHM had been hiked from Rs.20,740 to Rs.26,000.
The State government would also be launching soon the Central scheme of supplying iron and folic acid supplements to schoolchildren to counter anaemia, he added.
