The Comptroller General of India (ACGI) has poorly rated the health service of Jharkhand and suggested several measures to improve health service at par with the national standard.
ACGI conducted a performance audit at some of the selected government hospitals in districts and submitted its report to the Jharkhand assembly.
According to the report, there is a critical “requirement for sustained and determined action to close the gap between patient care received and the target outcomes in District Hospitals (DHs).”
The ACGI report covers the period of 2014-19 when Raghubar Das led BJP-Ajsu Party government was in power. The audit was conducted during 2019-20 under the prescribed parameters to ascertain whether the health services meet requirements as explained in National Health Policy. It has given a poor rating and said that focussed planning was required to give quality service to people.
The audit team checked key areas namely Out-Patient and In-Patient Services, Maternity Services, Diagnostic Services, Infection Control and Drug Management.
It criticized the health department for not being serious about improving health services. It said that the department never showed any interest to ensure that bare minimum infrastructure and resources are provided to district hospitals. The report said that there was a huge gap between sources made available to hospitals and those that were actually required.
It recommended the government to address basic issues and punitive actions against officials who intentionally violate norms.
Examining the flows of patients at Out-Patient Departments (OPDs) and availability of doctors, the report said that the number of patients increased by 57 per cent in 2018-19 in comparison with the year 2014-15.
But even after that, no additional deployment of the doctor was made whereas the flow of patients was growing day by day. The situation became worse for doctors and patients. A single doctor was forced to treat patients. Doctors could devote even a minimum time of five minutes to examine a patient. Moreover, the waiting time of patients increased since the prescribed minimum consultation time decreased. Even the sitting arrangements besides basic facilities like water, toilet and grievance redressal mechanism were substandard.
Most of the district hospitals are lacking proper diagnostic services, functional equipment. It said that out of 23 district hospitals, the Intensive Care Units (ICU) was established in nine between July 2016 and May 2017. But these were not in proper shape so was the case with the Separate Accident and Trauma wards.