PESHAWAR: The installation of biometric attendance system has been benefiting the patients visiting the teaching hospitals for treatment in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“The new attendance system installed some three months ago at the teaching hospitals of the province has ensured presence of doctors and support staff. This has benefited the poor patients who cannot afford visiting private clinics of the doctors,” a senior physician told this correspondent.

He said that initially there were some reservations about the new mechanism, but now things had settled down and the attendance of medical staff was improving. According to earlier practice, the specialist OPDs would start operations at 10:00am at the teaching hospitals and these were supposed to run through 2:00pm. However, senior doctors would sit there hardly till midday after which the patients were either seen by junior doctors or they would visit private clinics in the evening.

“Many patients advised certain investigations at OPD would face utter disappointment when they would see that doctors were missing from the OPD after they had returned with the desired investigations,” he said.

But all this was happening before the biometric system was put in place as now the OPDs remain open till 2:00pm with the presence of all staff from professors to the ward boy.

OPDs of teaching hospitals remain open till 2:00pm

Prior to the biometric system there was no mechanism to check the presence of doctors in wards. Every ward at the teaching hospitals has at least 30 doctors, including professors, associate professors, assistant professors, senior and junior registrars, medical officers, trainee medical officers and house officers.

In-charge professor of each ward had the authority to check their presence through verbal inquiries as there was no attendance registers for doctors as opposed to nurses, paramedics and class-IV staff who would put their signatures in attendance registers before the biometric system.

“When the professors and other senior doctors were away from the wards in connection with meetings and lectures in medical colleges, the juniors would have a field day and would left the wards at their sweet will,” said an administration officer at one of the teaching hospitals.

Requesting anonymity, he said that they had become sick of complaints regarding absence of doctors from the ward and the ward boys would continue to locate the on-duty doctors in hostels, but the new system had helped them to ensure doctors’ attendance.

He claimed that before the biometric system about 6,000 patients were examined at the Khyber Teaching Hospital, Hayatabad Medical Complex and Lady Reading Hospital, but now the number of patients had gone up to 10,000.

Still, some doctors and other staffers dodge the administration even in presence of the new system, but they were being corrected, he said.

“They affix thumbs on biometric machine at 8:00am in the morning and then leave the hospital and come at 2:00pm to affix their thumbs again to show their presence but such employees were now being traced,” he said.

A senior professor at the LRH said that the new system was meant to make the patient care effective. He said that the government hospitals had human resources enough for the diagnosis and treatment of the patients if these were utilised judiciously.

Upon success of the attendance system, the government has started extending it to the directorate of health and other hospitals, he said.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2015

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