PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is yet to start implementation of the amendment made to Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015 regarding the removal of consultants, who are not doing institution-based practice, from administrative positions.

The MTIRA was passed by the provincial assembly in 2015 to introduce reforms in the healthcare system and ensure effective patients’ care.

The hospitals and affiliated medical colleges covered by the law were being run by the respective Board of Governors (BoGs), which were supposed to enforce government’s policy in the public sector health facilities.

The piece of legislation was one of the pet projects of the PTI government in the province. The IBP was the main component of the law to deploy senior consultants in evening practice to generate revenue and spend the same on common patients visiting the hospitals in morning time.

Senior consultants occupy administrative positions despite not opting for IBP

Most of the consultants stayed away from IBP, prompting the architects of the law to incorporate amendments to it to force them into doing the same. However, the law, covering nine institutions, remained far from implementation in its amended form.

Now, it is mandatory for chairpersons of the department to do IBP or relinquish their positions.

On December 21 last year, the government amended Section 17 of the law that says: “The employees, who don’t opt for the private practice on the premises of hospitals, clinics, imaging facilities and laboratories of the medical teaching institutions, shall not be entitled to any increase, adjustment, incentives, bonuses or other ancillary benefits, or administrative posts, except of extraordinary needs as decided by the board.”

The Act was signed by governor January 3. Since then, there it has not been implemented in any of the MTIs. The controllers of the law had claimed that they would strictly implement it after winning elections for the second time in the province.

Sources said that the crucial amendment was passed to remove senior consultants from the administrative positions, which remained a pipe dream. They added that senior people still held administrative positions.

The IBP in the hospitals is yet to fully take off as most of the institutions don’t have the services of senior consultants and specialties to get the desired income by using hospitals’ space, diagnostic and treatment services in the evening shift.

Senior consultants are dean and medical directors in IBP as it is mandatory for them.

The patients rely on the junior specialists, deployed by the MTIs, who run the show. They get good salaries and work in the morning too.

Sources said that relevant authorities in the MTIs were constantly trying to ensure the enforcement of the amended law and asking the chairpersons of the departments to sit in the IBP but it was the job of the respective BoGs to do so.

They said that most of the consultants, who headed the departments in the MTIs, continued to run private clinics in the evening after performing duty in their respective hospitals.

Sources said that the consultants were not ready to accept the MTIRA as they enjoyed status of civil servants and were governed under the government’s law. Since 2015, the government faced strings of petitions in the court, in the light of which amendments made to MTIRA to ensure its enforcement.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2019