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RIMS hospital on death bed
Highlights
The Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Ongole is the only public hospital available to the Prakasam district people for treatment of all major diseases. But the hospital itself is suffering from the negligence and ego problems of the officials and doctors.
The Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Ongole is the only public hospital available to the Prakasam district people for treatment of all major diseases. But the hospital itself is suffering from the negligence and ego problems of the officials and doctors.
To keep the hospital alive and able to serve public, the government should set up an ‘Intensive Counseling Unit (ICU)’ for administration and staff to make them remember and understand service is their duty, says various sections of public.
The RIMS was started in 2008 to deliver corporate standard treatment to the people of Prakasam district.
It was constructed in 37-acre campus with a budget of Rs 242 crore. Everyday about 1,500 out-patients and 150 in-patients visit RIMS for treatment.
The hospital management submitted bills for Rs 180 crore for the construction and provision of facilities in the hospital. But the hospital does not have a dedicated drinking water facility till now.
The hospital has severe shortage of medicine including B-complex tablets, syringes, saline bottles and what not! It does not have the catgut- 1grade thread used for stitches after surgeries. A senior official in the Central Drug Store, which is supposed to deliver the indent from the hospital, said on anonymity, “We kept requesting the government for release of drugs to the hospital.
We are in severe shortage of medicines and tools like surgical blades, syringes, test kits and saline bottles.
At present the patients are asked to get the tests done at private labs and get the medicine from outside.” Apart from the lack of platelet machine, which is used for early detection of dengue, MRI scanning, CT scan, X-ray machines are not working as they do not have the films and gels required for testing.
On the other hand, the hospital, which needs about 180 teaching and treatment staff, has just 122 personnel on rolls. Among them only 22 are regular and the remaining are working on temporary basis. For the 180 sanitary staff required, there are only 95 persons to take care of the hygiene and sanitation in the hospital. As there is severe staff shortage, it became a regular practice to involve all the available hands in treatment.
The patients coming to the hospital from hundreds of kilometers are just running away from the treatment as they got to know the persons injecting them are not at least ward boys, but are illiterate sanitary workers. On Friday, a patient injured in a road accident changed his mind and joined a private hospital after knowing that he received injection from a sanitary worker at RIMS.
The District Collector dismissed the worker on Saturday. The officials, ministers and politicians kept visiting the hospital for the past few months and threatening the doctors and administration staff to face consequences if the sanitation is not improved.
The doctors and staff kept demanding them to provide the necessary staff and equipment before questioning them for quality of service.
As the Chairman of the RIMS Board, the Collector, Sujatha Sharma, is visiting the hospital almost three times a week and constantly pitching for improving sanitation. On Deepavali, she had an argument with one of the duty doctor whom later she suspended for misbehavior with officials.
A senior doctor in the hospital said, “The previous Director resigned as he is unable to cope up with the mental torture of the officials and politicians.
They are giving priority to the looking of the exteriors and thinking that a neat looking hospital could give best treatment.
But, without the required equipment, staff and medicines how could we treat patients? Now we are referring the patients to Guntur or Nellore to keep themselves on safe side.”
But the version of the hospital has half truth. The Collector kept demanding for the 100 percent attendance of the staff and insisting on data from electronic attendance system on a daily basis. She advised the staff to shift the biometric system at College to hospital.
Someone injected liquid to make the machine malfunctioning. On her surprise visit to the hospital on Deepavali, she observed that one-third of the staff scheduled for duty were absent without permission.
She issued all of them including the Director of RIMS show-cause notices. A silent storm is brewing in the hospital now, to take up the mode of agitation any time to demand lifting of suspension of doctors and withdraw showcause notices.
The people want the government to interfere in the issue and treat the RIMS to recover from death bed. Satyanarayana, an attendant to a patient said, “The hospital has a huge building and looks great from outside. But it is infested with the negligence of officials and staff.
They love to be uninterrupted and do not want to be responsible. If the government fails to treat the RIMS with a view to treating a patient in ICU, the
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