Panel to monitor private hospitals’ activities

KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday pulled up city-based private hospitals for “unethical” money-making practices and announced the formation of a regulatory commission to monitor their activities.

The Trinamool Congress supremo berated hospital managements for excess billing and medical negligence and called upon them to show a “humane” side.

Banerjee met the top brass of private hospitals (that have 100-plus bed capacity) at Town Hall with a roster of grievances of the public against them, including turning away emergency patients.

“We are setting up a West Bengal Health Regulatory Commission headed by an ex-chief justice or judge and experts. It will have representation of the public, the physicians and the hospitals as well. There will comprehensive monitoring from billing to performance,” she said.

The Commission will submit a report every month. She also said the West Bengal Clinical Act will be amended and will be made stronger.

While admonishing the hospital authorities, Banerjee advised citizens to refrain from taking law into their own hands, referring to the vandalism at CMRI hospital where relatives of a patient and locals ransacked the hospital accusing it of wrong treatment and demanding money without taking care of critical patients.

The incident triggered the meeting where all senior Bengal health services officials were present.

“I appeal to the public to not take law into their own hands. One (doctor) can make a mistake but that does not make everybody a culprit,” she said, requesting physicians to stand by the kin of the deceased and display empathy.

Banerjee also informed the hospital officials that a survey had been carried out recently following which as many as 70 hospitals were slapped show cause notices.

“Out of 2088 healthcare facilities, we have surveyed 942 places and 70 have been showcaused. Thirty-three licenses have been cancelled. We had been getting complaints for a long time and it’s not that we didn’t do anything,” she said.

She vowed to clamp down on “unethical” practices. “There is absence of cleanliness and coordination.

There is excess billing and some patients are being admitted to ICUs or put on ventilator when these options are not required in their cases.