The state government will consider how to best incentivise health personnel in Meghalaya in order to overcome their resistance when posted in far-flung parts of the state.
With the carrot of incentives could also come the stick of a policy that ensures that all staff in the Health Department compulsorily serve at least one “difficult” posting.
Meanwhile, Health and Family Welfare Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh also said today that human resources is the key area in the state’s healthcare system that needs work on.
A review meeting was held today involving Lyngdoh and Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma. The meeting was to review and evaluate the performances of civil hospitals and district hospitals across the state. Several other issues related to the Health Department were also discussed.
As part of the review were considerations of the requirements of infrastructure and also the indexes for evaluation of performance and it was decided today that amongst the most critical requirements in all of these hospitals was human resources.
“The Chief Minister is now informed about the shortfall of nurses, paramedical staff, specialists and medical doctors. This evaluation was done with the purpose to ensure that we are able to track the performance of all of our hospitals and we will await another interaction with the Chief Minister to see what are the other areas and what are the financial inputs that the government will be taking to ensure that our health system improves substantially. We are giving ourselves about 24 to 36 months and we will evaluate the performance accordingly,” informed the minister.
