Health Dept Issues Guidelines For Govt Doctors Doing Private Practice

Bhubaneswar : The Health and Family Welfare Department today issued a set of COVID-19 related guidelines for Medical Officers / Doctors who are doing private practice in nursing home and clinics.

“Health & FW Department has observed that number of health care personnel are getting affected by COVID-19. The contact with confirmed COVID-19 cases under appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) use falls under low risk category as observed by the WHO. Hence such occurrence of COVID-19 infection among health care workers raises doubt regarding the adherence to the prescribed Infection prevention and control (IPC) guideline,” a notification issued by the Health Department stated.

The notification issued by Additional Chief Secretary (Health), Pradipta Mohapatra read, “Infection among the health care workers not only possess the risk to the health and wellbeing of such workers but also carries risk to their family members and other persons who come in contact with them. This may also lead to progressive shortage of such personnel which in turn is likely to have negative effect on our endeavour to capacity building and COVID-19 infection.”

In order to mitigate the above problems, the State Government issued the following guidelines to be strictly adhered by the Medical Practitioners who are pursuing professional practice in their own consultation chamber or in private set up like nursing homes / poly clinics / private clinics etc.

👉🏻All Nursing Home /Poly clinic /Clinic /Consulting chambers must have separate fever
clinic and isolation facilities.
👉🏻There must be provision of hand washing facilities, availability of hand sanitizer and
mask.
👉🏻All equipment like BP Instruments, Stethoscope, Thermometers and any other touch points must be sterilized/ disinfected after every single use.
👉🏻Each establishment shall have a reception facility to guide the patients of fever, SARI/ILI and the person from hotspot areas/containment areas to the designated OPD of the nearest Government/ Private Covid Hospitals.
👉🏻It will be the duty of the practitioner that to ensure that anybody entering the facilities
must use mask and have washed their hand or using sanitizer.
👉🏻The practitioner must ensure social distancing and IPC protocol is followed scrupulously in its premises.
👉🏻Display of IEC material on infection control practices with Do’s and Don’ts must be displayed in the premises.
👉🏻It is mandatory to notify SARI/ILI cases to district surveillance unit / local bodies.
👉🏻They have to maintain a register of patients attending the clinic.
👉🏻They must allow access to authorised persons for inspection of premises or to the
records as and when required.
👉🏻In case any doctor is found negligent, the action as deemed fit under provision of law
will be taken.