PESHAWAR, Jan 13: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government is all set to do away with the institution-based practice (IBP) of doctors, official sources said.

An official of the health department on Monday told Dawn: “Yes, we know and admit that the IBP was introduced for the government-run hospitals in a quite hasty manner. Doctors and other stakeholders weren’t taken into confidence, which is the main cause of its failure.”

He said the government had formed an 11-member committee, comprising MPAs and technical experts, to take stock of the situation and furnish recommendations to the government on this new system.

All the members of the committee, according to the official, are convinced that the new system has failed, and it needs to be reversed. The military-led government implemented the IBP on March 1, 2002, following the reports that the government doctors were fleecing patients at their private clinics.

The IBP was aimed at checking corrupt practices of the doctors and provide a relief to poor patients, but it failed to deliver the goods as the hospitals charge Rs300 per patient as consultation fee, same as is charged at the private clinics.

According to statistics, the three hospitals here— Lady Reading Hospital, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex— have so far earned Rs190 million through the IBP.

Though a bulk of the amount has been spent on the upgradation of the hospitals’ laboratories, there is no benefit for the patients, who paid more for investigations to the public hospitals than they did to the privately-run laboratories. Similarly, fees for operations and other medical procedures were higher under the IBP than charged by the private medical facilities.

The failure of the new system is evident from the fact that each of these hospitals initially received over 400 patients per day, because the patients had no option to see their doctors, except at these hospitals.

Hardly a month passed after the launching of the IBP that many senior consultants resigned in protest against it and began private their clinics, which caused severe blow to the IBP as the patients started visiting the private clinics.  

Their resignations not only dealt a blow to the IBP, but also caused a damage to the medical education in the province. Some departments like neurosurgery, plastic surgery, paedology, pulmonology, orthopaedics and cardiothoracic suffered a great deal because the consultants in these medical branches left the hospitals, and the wards are now being run by simple medical practitioners.

The IBP did not also serve the purpose of stopping the doctors from their private clinics.

Some doctors hired touts at these hospitals, who send the patients for investigation to outside laboratories for their commission. In some cases patients were examined and operated upon off the record and the payments were received directly by the doctors concerned.

Each of the three hospitals have displayed the names of about 70 consultants available under the IBP, but the ground realities are that only five to 10 doctors visit the hospitals in the evening hours.