By Our Reporter
Shillong, Nov 6: Concerned over the rising practice of referrals by local health centers to higher facilities, the Meghalaya government has decided to identify the underlying reasons and is planning to make substantial investments in conducting comprehensive research to address this issue.
The decision was made following a review meeting that Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma had with Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh.
They reviewed and evaluated the performances of civil hospitals and district hospitals across the state. Several other issues related to the Health Department were also discussed.
Lyngdoh said they want to find out the reasons behind the frequent referrals of patients.
Stating that this is one of the top priorities of the government, she mentioned that they had reviewed performance, infrastructure requirements and indexes for evaluation of performance. It was felt that human resources are among the most critical requirements in all such hospitals.
The government took a decision to incentivise the services of health personnel across the state after it was found that they put up resistance when assigned to go to far-flung places.
To fix this problem, the government is also planning to come up with a policy which will entail a compulsory difficult posting for everyone in the Health Department at the initial stage of service.
The government will soon hold another review meeting at the Shillong Civil Hospital and take measures to win back the faith of the public in the government-run health institutions.
