The Health Department on Friday launched a week-long compulsory counselling for transfer of doctors to peripheral hospitals and rural medical colleges to comply with the Medical Council of India’s norms.
As many as 900 doctors, including seniors, from clinical and non-clinical specialities, have been asked to attend the counselling. But this could lead to the removal of nearly 400 posts in government medical college hospitals across the State and impact patient care, the affected doctors said. They blamed the government for not implementing its order of 2009.
At that time when the doctors had demanded time-bound promotion and higher pay band, the government said it would provide promotions based on vacancy. Of the 11,000 doctors (in the three directorates — Medical Education, Medical and Rural Health Service and Public Health) 2,500 should have been promoted since then. The order was never implemented but recruitment continued. There are now 18,000 doctors in government service.
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“The MCI norms on minimum criteria are meant for private medical college hospitals. The structure is entirely different in government medical college hospitals,” Tamil Nadu Government Doctors’ Association (TNGDA) secretary N. Ravishankar said, suggesting that counselling should start from higher posts to lower posts so as to fill up all vacancies.
K. Senthil, president of the association, said: “The government wants to post MBBS, diploma holders in peripheral hospitals and send post-graduate specialists to rural medical colleges. TNGDA has requested them to retain posts for patient welfare and conduct the counselling as per norms, giving equal opportunity for all doctors as per seniority.”
According to him the list for the counselling was prepared haphazardly as seniority was not followed. “Senior doctors have been called for the counselling, eliminating juniors. This is a result of the State having reached the saturation point in postgraduate seats in most subjects except a handful of specialities,” he added.
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A. Ramalingam of Service Doctors and Postgraduates Association said the Civil Medical List should be followed. The government, according to him, is looking at institution-wise seniority list which was hurting the promotion prospects of seniors. “For a college to admit 150 students it should have 500 beds. But in all our government medical college hospitals the bed strength is around 750 to 1,000. The current restructuring has not considered patient workload,” he said.
Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar, however, dismissed the concerns and said, “We need to do this exercise to increase the number of postgraduate seats in the State. The MCI has given us guidelines and we are following that. We are trying to retain those with super-speciality experience by placing them on deputation. We are moving these specialists to where there is a requirement, without causing too much displacement.”