Kolkata, Sept. 17 -- The members of the newly reconstituted West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission (WBCERC) held its first meeting on Wednesday and decided to put up stalls in big puja pandals and also in the Kolkata Book Fair so that people can drop their complaints against private hospitals.

The new committee of the WBCERC has also taken a decision to impose fines of higher denominations on the private hospitals. In those cases where there was a rule to impose a fine of up to 30 lakh during the earlier Trinamool Congress government, the amount will go up to Rs 50 lakh. The members of the WBCERC will pay surprise visits to various hospitals across the state to examine if all the norms laid down by the state government under the Clinical Establishments Act are followed. The district tour will begin with North Bengal. During the district tours, the members will also examine the hospital infrastructure, services, cleanliness, security of the patients.

The patients and their family members will be able to lodge complaints by dialling the toll-free number of the WBCERC ~ 18603453512. The committee also took several decisions which include setting up ramps in all private hospitals and maintaining 2 feet distances between two beds in hospitals to check transmission of infection. If there is no ramp in any private hospital, then the size of the list should be bigger.

The BJP government recently reconstituted the WBCERC, appointing retired Calcutta High Court judge Biswajit Bose who replaced earlier chairperson retired justice Ashim Kumar Banerjee.

IAS officer Moumita Godara Basu has taken over as vice-chairperson. Senior doctors, including Subhash Chandra Biswas, Sushanta Bandyopadhyay (former director of medical education), Syamasis Bandyopadhyay, and Narayan Chakrabarty, are among the 13 newly appointed members, alongside former Kolkata Police commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti.

Justice Banerjee had served as chairperson of the commission, which acts as a quasi-judicial body tasked with supervising and regulating private healthcare facilities, since 2018.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.