Private practice: Doctors jack up fees by up to 50%

Hike decided in a meeting on Friday, PDA kept out of loop.

PESHAWAR:

Poor people will bear an even greater burden following the decision by doctors in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) to increase private clinic fees after the government’s refusal to meet their wage demands.

The decision was taken in a meeting held here in Peshawar last Friday, which was attended by senior doctors running private clinics in different parts of Peshawar, sources said.

Most doctors in public sector hospitals including medical professors, associate professors, assistant professors, senior registrars and medical officers are running private clinics and hospitals in the city, generating a handsome amount of income from them. The decision was made by senior doctors alone and they did not consult with the Provincial Doctors Association (PDA), Dr Dilaram, PDA spokesperson, told The Express Tribune.

Before increasing private clinic fees, senior doctors and professors were charging Rs500 per patient in private clinics, which has gone up to Rs700 to Rs800. The remaining, associate professors, assistant professors, senior registrar charged Rs400, which has climbed to Rs600 to Rs700. Medical officers have also raised their fee from Rs300 to Rs400, sources said.

“It is the provincial government’s responsibility to ask senior doctors why they increased fees because it is not our decision, nor did PDA have any role in it,” Dr Dilaram said.

People have shown great concern over the fee hike and termed it an injustice to the poor. “I brought my brother to the OPD at Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) yesterday but the doctor just looked and prescribed several medicines without running any tests,” said Imran Khan, a resident of Lower Dir.

He added that when he visited the same doctor’s private clinic at Dabgari Garden and paid Rs700 as fee, the doctor properly checked his brother and recommended that he be admitted in a hospital..

The administration in all major hospitals of the province has also failed to get the most out of professors and other senior doctors. Doctors at LRH, for instance, rarely come to OPDs and never consult patients in their hospital offices, an official at LRH revealed.

The Health Regulatory Authority (HRA), the sole institution regulating private doctors, has officers and inspectors who confine themselves to their offices.

“We have no authority to regulate or fix fees for private hospitals or for doctors’ private clinics,” HRA Chairperson Muzaffar
Khan said.

Khan added that HRA receives complaints against increasing doctors’ fee every day but they cannot take any action against doctors because they have no power. He said, “The government should empower HRA if we are to be able to meet the expectations of the public.”



Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2011.