KARNATAKA

Health Department on aggressive drive to hire doctors on call

1,401 doctors’ posts vacant at health centres in State, of which 994 are for specialists

Faced with a shortage of 1,400 doctors at its healthcare centres, the State Health Department is going all out to hire them on call.

The department is widely publicising its decision to hire doctors on call and on contract. While a monthly remuneration of Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 1.2 lakh has been fixed for doctors opting to take up a job on contract, a retention fee of Rs. 10,000 apart from a daily out-patient fee of Rs. 2,000 has been fixed for those who are on call. These on call doctors will also get a fixed amount for every procedure they conduct. The fee for every procedure has been fixed and notified in a Government Order issued on March 3.

Principal Secretary (Health and Family Welfare) Shalini Rajneesh told The Hinduthat ever since the department started publicising the scheme in the last one week, 142 candidates had sent their biodata and 109 enquiry calls were made.

Notices inviting on call doctors have been put up on the campus of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) and Karnataka Medical Council (KMC) where medical graduates and professionals visit frequently, she said.

“We have realised that the poor response from doctors is mostly because they are not aware that such a scheme exists. So, we are now publicising the scheme in places where it will attract doctors’ attention. Anyone interested can call our Arogya Sahayavani 104 for more details, or email their biodata with choice of place to oncallspecialistskar@gmail.com,” she said.

Despite enhanced salaries and incentives, there are not many takers for medical posts in the department. The department’s recruitment drive conducted through KPSC last year has only validated this. Of 1,122 applicants, only 597 reported for duty.

This is striking, especially when the number of applicants is many times the existing posts in other government departments.