Haldia teaching hospital hires private pathologists for MCI inspection
Authorities pay hefty amount to doctors to show them on the rolls of the institution.
During visits by Medical Council of India (MCI) officers earlier this month, a hospital in Haldia wass full of teaching doctors.
But as soon as the inspections were over, these teachers, who were brought from Kolkata to give MCI an impression that there was adequate teaching staff in the district hospital, went back to their permanent positions as medical officers in private pathological laboratories.
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In a desperate bid to satisfy the MCI, the private medical college hospital in Haldia allegedly hired several doctors from some private diagnostic and pathological labs in the city and showed them as their permanent faculty members.
The alleged irregularities have sparked off controversy at a time when the high court has recently pulled up another private medical college in the Jadavpur area on unfair admission process in the MBBS course under the management quota.
On September 11, a MCI team visited the Haldia teaching hospital to verify infrastructure arrangements like human resources’ strength, hostels, academic buildings and laboratories in the college that has 100 MBBS seats.
According to the hospital’s teaching faculty list that was shown to the MCI, some junior doctors who are permanently attached with different private sector pathological labs in the city have been shown as junior teachers. The list has also mentioned their dates of joining the hospital.
HT identified two such doctors who said that they are attached with two private laboratories in Salt Lake and Duttapukur in the northern fringes of Kolkata.
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When asked about their simultaneous attachment as medical teachers in the college in Haldia, they disconnected the telephone.
Sources in the college said that the authorities hire these doctors from different non-government healthcare institutes paying them hefty amounts every day during MCI visits for minimum two or three days to be present in the institute on the eve of academic session every year. They are known to charge about Rs 40,000--Rs 50,000 per day.
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“There might be some mistakes in the system and we will rectify this,” a senior member of the administration of the Haldia medical college told HT.
Several years ago, MCI had issued a show cause notice to the college asking why it was being run from a building that also housed the dental college for four years.
The notice was served after the Supreme Court directed both MCI and Dental Council of India (DCI) to take action against the college.
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The college was brought under the scanner of the MCI in 2011 when the state health department lodged a complaint with the council saying that both the medical college and dental college were housed in the same building.
MCI had given its green signal to the college to allow admissions in the MBBS course from this academic session before the health department lodged complaints with the council.