After an interlude, the private practice of government doctors is once again becoming a bone of contention between the government and the medical fraternity in the State.
The Vigilance department, which conducted surprise raids across the State in the past two days, reported that several doctors were indulging in private practice in violation of the guidelines.
It reported that 19 doctors in the Medical Education Service and 64 doctors in the State Health Service had been conducting private practice in violation of the norms and recommended department-level action against them.
Following this, while the government warned of stern action against those doctors violating private practice norms, the doctors have taken the government action as an affront to their self-respect.
In a statement here, the Kerala Government Medical Officers’ Association (KGMOA) pointed out that government doctors were allowed to do private practice outside duty hours.
The raids, by forcibly entering the homes of doctors in some instances and by questioning them in front of their patients as though they were criminals, would only serve to demoralise the medical fraternity and portray them as wrongdoers.
It said the Vigilance raids had led to exaggerated and one-sided media reports, giving the impression to the general public that the entire medical fraternity was corrupt and indulging in illegal activities.
The government should take action against specific instances of corruption or violation of norms. But conducting blanket raids on doctors and humiliating them before the public was certainly not the way to go forward, the KGMOA said, expressing its protest against the Vigilance raids.
Government doctors (doctors in Health Service) are allowed to do private practice outside their duty hours. The guidelines say that doctors can only see private patients in their homes and not patients whom they are treating in hospitals. According to the Vigilance, many doctors were seeing patients in private, in clinics set up around government hospitals.
In the case of doctors in the Medical Education Service, the decision to do away with private practice was taken by the government in 2009, so that doctors would be encouraged to use their spare time for promoting research in medical colleges. The doctors in clinical specialties, in turn, were allowed a non-practising allowance to compensate for the loss of private practice.
With the government trying to act tough, the KGMOA has vowed that it will not allow the authorities to demoralise doctors by portraying private practice as a criminal activity.
