NEW DELHI: After a 6-year-long deputation, Dr M Srinivas will be back to his old organisation with a newfound responsibility to head it.
The Dean of ESIC Hospital and Medical College in Hyderabad, Srinivas, has been appointed as the new director of the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi after the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved his name as the new director of the premier institute.
He will succeed Dr Randeep Guleria to become the 16th director of the prestigious institute. Srinivas has been a faculty at AIIMS-Delhi in the past. He was a professor in the Department of Pediatric Surgery before shifting to the ESIC Hospital and Medical College in Hyderabad in 2016.
According to sources, his accomplishments as an administrator put him ahead of 31 other top doctors who applied for the coveted position. Srinivas was handpicked by the Centre in 2016 to bring the ESIC Hyderabad “out of a coma,” according to a senior official.
He is credited with giving the institute a new lease of life, which had nothing but concrete walls without doctors and staff, he added.
Earlier that year, the Indian Medical Council (IMC) cancelled the licence of the institute a second time as it did not meet the necessary standards. However, he managed to turn things around with the help of technology.
According to the people close to him, he enforced the Aadhaar-Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) to ensure that doctors and other staff attend the hospital regularly.
“Under him, ESIC became the first institution in the country to use AEBAS to record the attendance of staff. The technology was also used for preparing salaries. It helped improve the attendance and punctuality as late-comers for more than three days were penalised with a salary deduction,” an official said. Besides, he also applied similar technology to curb corrupt practices among doctors.
“Many doctors referred patients to private facilities in anticipation of a commission. Srinivas made it mandatory for the doctors to provide biometric details with each referral. The percentage came down to 3 in subsequent years of its implementation,” another senior government official informed.
Meanwhile, the outgoing director of AIIMS, Guleria, is expected to return to head the Department of Pulmonary Medicine and Sleep Disorders. He is due for retirement in 2024.