NEW DELHI: Ten new AIIMS hospitals, to be set up in different parts of the country, will have well-known doctors and not Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare as chairpersons, in a marked shift in government policy.
Government officials said that the decision has been taken to facilitate faster decision making at these facilities. At present, Union health minister is the chairman of AIIMS, Delhi and six other such institutions in Bhubaneshwar, Bhopal, Rishikesh, Patna, Jodhpur and Raipur.
“There has been a growing feeling that many crucial decisions get delayed or stuck because new hospitals have to reach out to the Centre for major approvals and decisions. Hence, it has now been decided that the upcoming AIIMS hospitals will have senior doctors as chairmen,” a senior health ministry official said.
From 2019, two more AIIMS units at Mangalgiri and Nagpur are set to be operational. These are the first AIIMS institutions for which individual chairpersons have been appointed. There are plans to build new centres at Gorakhpur, Kalyani, Chansagri, Vijaypur, Awantipora, Bhatinda, Bilaspur and Madurai.
Acute shortage of doctors and infrastructure gaps have been cited as the main reasons for the limited utility of the new AIIMS hospitals.
To tide over manpower shortage, the new AIIMS units have invited retired doctors from India’s three top medical institutions — AIIMS, Delhi, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh and Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Pondicherry — to join these facilities.
The other measures include offering fresh postgraduate students from AIIMS, Delhi a choice to join new institutions to campus placements, and, asking senior teaching doctors from well-established medical colleges to these institutes as visiting faculty.