West Bengal Chief Minister, Suvendu Adhikari, on Saturday announced that the health department will start "live monitoring" of district hospitals in the state to curb malaises plaguing the healthcare system. He said that through this live monitoring of functioning of hospitals, the government wants to cure three long-standing malaises, namely absence of doctors during official duty hours, rampant reference of patients to medical colleges and hospitals in Kolkata without adequate reason and agents’ networks.
“There will be a 24-hour control room to monitor functioning of the district hospitals. We are hiring professionals to ensure that no broker operates in the hospitals and that no patient is referred unnecessarily. The government will adopt a zero-tolerance policy in this matter,” the Chief Minister told media persons on the sidelines of the inauguration programme of a cervical cancer vaccination camp at Bidhannagar on the northern outskirts of Kolkata on Saturday.
He also said that patients or their family members will be able to lodge their complaints by dialling the dedicated number of the control-room set up for the purpose. The system will be operational mainly in district hospitals as well as in medical colleges and hospitals in West Bengal.
The live monitoring will be controlled from Swastha Bhavan, the headquarters of the state health department at Salt Lake on the northern outskirts of Kolkata. Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister also said around six crore people of West Bengal will be brought under the Ayushman Bharat Scheme, which is replacing the Swastha Sathi, the state’s own health insurance scheme introduced by the previous Mamata Banerjee-led government in West Bengal.
He also said that the state government had already started searching for land for setting up the proposed unit of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in North Bengal. He also said that private hospitals which secured land at just Re 1 from the previous government, will now have to mandatorily introduce free-bed systems in those hospitals. “Patients coming from economically weak backgrounds will get the treatment facilities for free over there,” the Chief Minister said.