Quality of MMC, BKMC services declining: PHSA

MARDAN: The Provincial Health Services Academy (PHSA) in its first audit and performance evaluation report has found that the healthcare services at the Mardan Medical Complex (MMC) and quality at the Bacha Khan Medical College (BKMC) have declined after the two institutions were given full financial and administrative autonomy following implementation of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led government’s health reforms.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Healthcare Commission (HCC) had tasked PHSA with conducting performance and evaluation audit of the Medical Teaching Institutes (MTIs) based in other districts.

Dr Tahir Nadeem, director general PHSA, led a team of doctors and did the audit and performance evaluation of the two institutions in four days.Sources in the PHSA told The News they had already submitted a brief report to the HCC. The HCC would brief Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, Health Minister Shahram Khan Tarakai and Secretary Health Abid Majeed about the deteriorating health services and teaching standards of MMC and BKMC.

“The report is based on facts and figures as well as ground realities of the two institutions. It is quite discouraging and exposed how funds are being misused and patient care neglected,” said an official of the Health Department after reading the report.

Pleading anonymity, he said despite the fact that the college funds had been increased from Rs80 million to Rs224 million in the past several years, the college results and standard declined.

“The college students used to get top positions in overall public sector medical colleges and KMU. But now it went into the bottom by showing poor results, lower than even the Bannu Medical College,” he said.

He said most of the senior faculty members had left the college due to various reasons and some of the very important departments such as pathology are currently run by the
demonstrators or less qualified people.

“The histopathology department was recognised for postgraduate studies and MoU was signed with RMI and an Islamabad-based institution for postgraduate training. The department is now supervised by a general cadre doctor and two demonstrators as the professor, associate professor and assistant professors had left the college,” the official said.

About the hospital, he said the report mentioned its condition as far worse.“The report mentioned that the Board of Governors has no clear future plan and direction. Most of the focus is on constructing new buildings instead of making sincere and serious efforts of utilising the existing buildings for patient care,” said the official.

One of the team members told The News on condition of anonymity that the situation at the hospital’s so-called Accident and Emergency Department (A&D) was pathetic.“Would you believe that heart attack patients at the CCU-2 at the A&D Department weren’t even touched by doctors in 24 hours after being brought there? Nobody even bothered to write history of those patients in the patient’s history chart. I was surprised when I came to know about cardiology ward and the 15 cardiologists working there,” said the PHSA official.

He said the medical director, hospital director and their dozens of managers were not even aware of what was happening to the patientsAccording to him, they found a woman brought to the orthopaedic ward of the hospital from Swabi on March 9 with very minor issue and nobody even examined her till March 18 when they visited the unit.

“We noticed the conditions at the ward in five minutes. It doesn’t seem to be a teaching hospital. We found avoidable referral cases. Most of the patients are unnecessarily sent to the hospitals in Peshawar,” he said.

Also, he said they found that most of the BoG members and its chairman are based away from Mardan and are least bothered in the affairs of MMC and BKMC.The team also found out that medicines were purchased at higher prices than the prescribed rates.

“We found that indoor patients are not given oral drugs. Only 40 percent of the indoor patients are being provided injectable drugs. The top management is not serious with their work. We noted that if the doctors better utilise their morning time they would not need other shifts,” the PHSA official said.

Health Minister Shahram Khan said the report had been submitted and he was studying the shortcomings it had highlighted.“We don’t take it as negative. We take it as a positive as its first time in the country a government got conducted audit of its own institutions through independent organisation. We will sit with the BoG and would thoroughly discuss the shortcomings highlighted in the report,” the minister said.He said the process would continue and such audit would be repeated after every three months.