From now on, doctors of Haryana Civil Medical Services, Haryana Dental Services and District Ayurvedic Officers, holding administrative posts, would also have to do clinical duty in Government hospitals across the State.
Haryana Health Minister, Anil Vij said the decision had been taken to ensure quality health care services and easy availability of doctors to the people in the State.
Haryana is currently facing acute shortage of medical officers and specialists in health institutions.
Vij said that doctors doing OPD duty besides administrative work would not only help in meeting the shortage of doctors but would also provide service and relief to the patients visiting government hospitals as they would not have to wait for doctors for long.
Under this decision, the Director General or Additional Director General, Health, would have to do clinical work for two hours any day in a week, whereas, all civil surgeons and other equivalent officers would have to do this work one day a week.
Similarly, Principal Medical Officer, Medical Superintendent, Deputy Civil Surgeon, Senior Medical Officer and other equivalent officers would also have to perform this duty for two days in a week.
He further said that doctors holding administrative posts would be allowed to choose hospital of their choice for performing clinical duty. Director General, Health, would maintain complete record of the clinical duty and strict action would be taken against such doctors as do not perform this duty, he said.
Notably, the National Health Profile 2018 released last week had pointed out acute shortage of manpower and massive gaps in health infrastructure in Haryana.
“There are only 16 specialists working in community health centres and there are 429 doctors at primary health centres in the entire Haryana. There is one government allopathic doctor in Haryana for every 10189 patients, a ratio which is nearly ten times more than the WHO-recommended doctor-patient ratio of 1:1000,” the NHP 2018 had stated.
Apart from this, the 11th Common Review Mission (CRM) report of the National Health Mission released last week had stated that lack of availability of gynecologists, pediatricians and anesthetists still remains an impediment in operationalizing first referral units (FRUs) at Community Health Centres in Haryana.
The state has 2589 sub centres, 366 PHCs and 112 CHCs in Haryana, as per the NHP -2018.