Stretching public healthcare to breaking point: Doctor crunch ails sarkari hospitals in TG
Despite rapid expansion in infrastructure and new medical colleges, Telangana's healthcare sector faces a severe staffing crisis. Explore the critical vacancy rates in tertiary and secondary care and the debate over the state's healthcare delivery model.
Hyderabad: Are mere additions to the numbers of public healthcare facilities a measure of the state government delivering its services on the healthcare front? The Telangana government seems to be believing so, going by the abandon with which it has been launching new hospitals and medical colleges regardless of the chronic shortage of doctors in tertiary care institutions across the state.
When it comes to tertiary care and teaching hospitals; the situation is alarming. For, altogether there are over 3,200 vacant posts, negatively impacting public health in the state.
According to official sources, the horrible situation with regard to sanctioned strength and positions occupied or “being filled” under various categories is like this: Under Primary Health (handled by Commissioner Health and Family Welfare) 729 posts are sanctioned, with 578 presently working and recruitment of 145 posts “under process”; in Primary Health (under Director of Public Health), sanctioned posts are 1,818, with 1,503 working and 315 posts vacant. In Secondary Health (presently under Telangana Vaidya Vidhana Parishad, sanctioned posts are 4,347, with 1,968 presently working, 1,658 posts “under recruitment”, and 721 vacant. In Tertiary Health (under Director of Medical Education), mostly medical colleges and hospitals, the sanctioned posts are 7,745, with 4,959 presently working, 2,410 “under recruitment” and 2,179 posts vacant.
Amid the sickening foregoing situation, the state government has been coming up with new much-hyped hospitals like TIMS (Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences). Four TIMS are coming up in the city, ostensibly with 2,000-bed capacity each. Similarly, the ambitious Warangal Health City project also requires many doctors. Another hospital, Mother and Child Hospital (MCH), is coming up near the NIMS Hospital.
According to officials, the shortage of doctors is becoming more and more acute because of the unplanned expansion of medical colleges, virtually there being one medical college per district despite insufficient medically qualified candidates for taking up senior teaching posts.
To get round (not solve) the problem, the state government has taken up recruitment on contract basis.
As per recommended standards, there should be at least one doctor for four patients. However, there is a shortage of one among three sanctioned doctor posts. According to sources, there were 1,900 vacancies in all teaching hospital and medical colleges. Recently over 600 vacancies of Assistant Professor were filled by the government through Telangana Medical and Health Services Recruitment Board and the remaining 1,300 vacancies need to be filled.
A senior official said that during the last two and half years, more than 9,000 posts were filled and the process of filling more than 7,000 additional posts was going on. Recently, the government had issued notification through NIMS for filling various posts in TIMS Sanathnagar. Before this, the government had deputed 180 doctors from various hospitals to TIMS on deputation basis.
Healthcare Reforms Doctors Association (HRDA) spokesperson Dr N Karthik said that there were nearly 1,900 assistant professor vacancies across government medical colleges in Telangana.
