Govt plans call centre to receive complaints and give quick response.
The state medical education department has decided to set up a call centre that will hear complaints from patients or their relatives, about poor attention being given to them at government hospitals.
This proposal has been put forward by Maharashtra minister for medical education Dr Vijaykumar Gavit, and when it is functional it could help to identify and punish errant doctors and other staff.
While government hospitals offer the only affordable medical care for a large number of people, the common experience is that the facilities are far from satisfactory. The call centre would register complaints about the absence of doctors at the casualty department or if doctors skip their rounds to check on patients in the wards.
An official of the medical education department said, “it has been found that on many occasions there are no doctors in the out-patient department or emergency centres which causes unnecessary harassment for patients and their relatives. To avoid this trouble, we have decided to set up a call centre that will record patients’ complaints.”
“The minister has asked the secretary of the department to examine the idea of setting up the call centre and the department will put forward a plan to establish one such centre at one of the hospitals on a pilot basis,” the official said.
The official explained that after receiving the complaint the call centre operator would immediately convey the matter to the officer in charge (like the dean or chief medical officer) at the hospital through an SMS and the officer in charge will have to take the necessary steps to help the patient.
“Till now there was no proper system to monitor the doctors when they did not report on time or did not turn up at work. The call centre will help the officer to know about such misconduct and get somebody to attend to the patients,” the official said.
Medical apathy
While government hospitals offer the only affordable medical care for a large number of people, the common experience is that the facilities are far from satisfactory. The call centre would register complaints about the absence of doctors at the casualty department or if doctors skip their rounds to check on patients in the wards.
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