Patients will benefit little from doctors’ institutional practice policy

It is rather a curious arrangement through which public hospital doctors can do private practice in their respective workplaces and a pilot scheme in this regard will begin on March 30. Actually, March 1 was the date of start, but the date was missed as preparations for it could not be complete.
Under this programme titled ‘Institutional Practice Policy 2023’, the private practice of the public hospital physicians will run primarily only in 10 district hospitals and 20 upazila health complexes across the country. However, the names of these hospitals and health complexes and specific days for the services–in two days in a week — were not disclosed. If anyone wants to avail health service from doctors of public hospitals outside the normal hours, from the fixed 3:00pm to 6:00pm, he will have to pay Tk 500 as consultation fee if the doctor is professor, Tk 400 for a associate professor, Tk 300 for an assistant professor and Tk 200 for an MBBS doctor. These amounts are not much less from what a doctor according to their ranks usually charges from a private health centre.
What is the purpose of introducing this weird plan in the first place? Reportedly, it is to stop patients from going to private health centres and ensure healthcare for patients in government hospitals in what the health described as ‘reasonable’ fees. In Bangladesh people complained for long that, in public health facilities, doctors are not found for consultation as they remain busy in private practice and that they themselves create an environment that forces patients to go to private centres where they pay hugely and avail the service.
It otherwise means that using government infrastructure and staff, the doctors can now do private practices. The patients will still have to pay a high price to avail this treatment. In this system, the doctors will be more benefitted than the patients. Note that after 6 pm, a doctor can still see patients in private health centres after taking some rest in between.
The whole idea would have been a praiseworthy one if in a government health facility, patients could avail treatment paying the same token price as they do now from 8:00am and 2:30pm. It is a moral necessity on the part of the government to protect the interest of poor patients who usually go to public health centres for service because they cannot afford treatment in private health centres. But in a country where the government usually serves the purpose of the rich and the affluent, poor people’s interests are always ignored.