The patients in all the districts of Uttarakhand would face problems as Uttarakhand chapter of Indian Medical Association (IMA) is set to enforce complete lockout in all the private hospitals and clinics from this Christmas (December 25).
The IMA is enraged over what they term nonchalant attitude of the State Government regarding their demand to enforce Uttarakhand Healthcare Establishment Act in the place of the contentious Clinical Establishment Act.
IMA said that all its members would stop sitting in the OPDs from December 23 and discharge all the admitted patients on December 24. On Saturday, all private medical professionals performed their duties while donning black arm bands as a mark of protest. There are more than 1400 private hospitals and clinics in the state which treat thousands of patients daily.
The secretary of the IMA, Dr D D Chaudhury said that on the direction of the Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, IMA had prepared an exhaustive draft document of the Uttarakhand Healthcare Establishment Act meant to replace Clinical Establishment Act and submitted it to the State administration.
He said that the association is peeved over no action being taken on the new draft and CM's secretariat is not giving time to the IMA for a meeting.
Notably, the Uttarakhand High Court (HC) in a recent landmark judgment had directed the State Government to seal all such hospitals and clinics not registered under Clinical Establishment Act.
IMA, the association of private medical practitioners in the State, wants the Act be not passed in its present State. It wants Uttarakhand to follow the Haryana model of the Act where all clinical establishments having less than 50 beds are exempted from the stringent provisions of the Act. It also wants reduction in registration charges.
Clinical Establishment Act
In an attempt to rein in the private clinics and hospitals, the State Government had enacted the Clinical Establish Act in 2016. However, due to strong protest staged by the private doctors and also thanks to the laidback attitude of the Government, the Act has not been enforced in the State. Under the provisions of the Act, it is compulsory for all the clinical establishments like doctor’s clinic, private hospitals, diagnostic centres, homeopathic doctors and Ayush doctors to get registered with the State council.
The Act calls for the clinical establishments to keep a record of the all the patients and disclose and display the type of services they provide. These establishments are bound to disclose the number and qualification of the staff they are employing and display the rate lists clearly under the Act.