Amid the glut of news related to the pandemic that included capping the price of COVID-19 test at ₹1,500, one key development went largely unnoticed in West Bengal: the government’s decision to allow doctors to perform basic medical procedures at their private clinics.
In early 2017, the government brought in the West Bengal Clinical Establishments Act, which prohibited private practitioners from carrying out even the simplest of procedures - such as conducting ECG or administering a vaccine or stitching up an wound - at their clinics unless the clinic was registered under the Act. Since getting registered and meeting the requirements prescribed under the Act was a cumbersome and an expensive process, most clinics had been reduced to consultation chambers.
This reversal of stand is a major victory for the West Bengal Doctors’ Forum, which was formed that year to fight the Act. The forum had gone to court, and while the hearing is still on, the State Government, following a series of dialogues with the forum, has scrapped the clause that barred private clinics from carrying out basic procedures.
Department notification
A notification issued by the Department of Health on October 1 allows 10 procedures to be carried out in consultation clinics. They include primary resuscitation and life-saving procedures; stitching of superficial injuries; removal of stitches, incision and drainage of superficial abscess; ECG; and catheterisation for urinary retention.
“Because of this clause, our clinics were being used only for consultation purposes, depriving care-seekers of routine as well as emergency procedures. This not only hindered clinical services but was also a blow to clinical autonomy. Now that clause stands abolished,” Dr. Koushik Chaki, a founding member of the forum, told The Hindu.
The scrapping of this clause couldn’t have been timelier. So far, from the time the Act came into effect, a private practitioner could only refer a patient to the nearest hospital or diagnostic centre for these simple - but often life-saving - procedures. In the time of the pandemic, visiting a hospital or diagnostic centre to get an ECG or a wound stitched only puts the patient at risk because the chances of one contracting COVID-19 are the highest in a hospital.
