Middlemen active in Medinirai medical college hospital in Daltonganj have attracted the attention of the Special Branch of the State Police.The branch sent a communication to the hospital authorities regarding the invasion and control of the middlemen in the MMCH Daltonganj, who are tempting, inducing and coercing doctors to write inflated prescriptions with medicines and tests to be found at exorbitant rates only outside the hospital and in the private medical store or in private pathology labs etc.
Medical superintendent Dr Dilip Kr Singh has confirmed to have received such a letter from the Special Branch regarding the middlemen calling the shots in the medical care and treatment in the MMCH. Singh said the ultimate sufferer is the patient who is made to cough up money for costly medicines and tests sometimes not required.
Sources said this menace of the middlemen influencing or controlling the treatment part in the MMCH Daltonganj has not been an overnight menace but in fact a menace of many decades.
The medical superintendent said he has now enlarged a committee of doctors from previous 3 members to 6 members who will keep an eye on such surreptitious prescriptions of the doctors coming to the patients either by way of temptation or inducement or coercion.
The 6 doctors tasked to bring in order in the prescriptions of the doctors to the patients are Dr Nagesh, Dr Ranjan, Dr Jitender, Dr Awadesh, Dr Anil Kumar Srivastav and Dr Vijeta. Sources said these 6 may find their new task far more difficult to achieve.
This correspondent spoke to a cross section of the patients as to how these middlemen fleece the patients and oblige the chicken hearted doctors who have not learnt to say No to such unethical demands of writing costly medicines and costly tests when normal medicines and tests facility available in the MMCH Daltonganj could have saved the patients money and time both.
The middlemen about whom all hell is now brought on earth here are the most recognised faces of the political parties ruling and the opposition as well.
Patients clearly said that there is no dearth of gullible doctors here who are hands in gloves with the middlemen and they do not mind singing the tune of the middlemen which makes them richer everyday with few thousands of rupees.
There is a strong nexus between the middlemen and a section of doctors here out to harm the noble medical profession here just for a few wads of currency notes, said sources.