No secretary, one month on, complaints pile up at medical negligence board

GURUGRAM: The probe into the

rising medical negligence complaints

in the city has hit a roadblock, a year after the constitution of a specialised board. This is because the post of

principal medical officer

in Civil hospital — secretary to

medical negligence

board — has been lying vacant for a month now, while a member is on leave, say officials.


In the past one year, the

district

medical negligence

board

has received some 72 complaints. Though it has disposed of 60 complaints till May, 12 have been pending since the last one month.

The pending complaints include grievances like overcharging and wrongful procedures against some leading private hospitals in the city, say officials.

Though a senior district doctor has been given the Civil hospital principal medical officer’s charge temporarily, but the negligence probes have been put on hold, according to officials. “Another doctor, who is on the board, is on long leave on health grounds,” said a health official, on condition of anonymity.

Moreover, according to senior doctors in the health department, medical negligence board probes often suffer because of lack of specialists in the district. The district medical neglig

ence board comprises of the district civil surgeon as chairperson, principal medical officer or medical superintendent of district hospital as member-secretary, a district-level member of Indian Medical Association (IMA), and two specialists of the concerned stream of medicines. TOI had previously reported that considering the shortage of specialist doctors in Gurugram, many doctors are called in from other districts or even from private hospitals to be part of the medical negligence board in a few cases.

However, when contacted, Dr Bhramdeep Sandhu, the acting principal medical officer, said, “The negligence cases have piled up and we will start probing these cases from Monday. These cases have been pending as the principal medical officer had been transferred and the another member of the board had gone on a long leave.”

The civil surgeon, however, denied that the board had not assembled for a month, saying that “it met two times”. The board earlier used to meet at least two times a week, and there was a proposal to convene the board five times a week, considering a rise in the number of medical negligence cases.

In May this year, a number of people who had lost their loved ones due to alleged medical negligence in hospitals of Gurugram, organised themselves into a body called Campaign for Dignified and Affordable Health-care, and wrote to Haryanahealth minister Anil Vij and Union health minister JP Nadda, asking them to institute clear procedures and norms for the investigation of patient complaints.