Government to raise doctors’ retirement age to 70

Aiming to improve healthcare facilities and making them accessible to the remotest part of the country, a high-level panel of secretaries has suggested to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that doctors’ retirement age should be increased to 70 years and even paramedics should be given training as full-time doctors to increase their availability in such regions.

In a recent presentation given before the Prime Minister, a group of secretaries on “Swasth Bharat Shikshit Bharat”, has recommended that by increasing the retirement age of doctors to 70 years, they will be able to provide their services — especially to the poor — for a longer period of time.

The panel also suggested that if paramedics are trained to be as doctors, there would be a greater number of professionally-equipped medical practitioners who then can be sent to rural areas having no access to healthcare.

Sources privy to the development told this newspaper that another recommendation related to increasing the availability of doctors was that private practitioners should be empanelled in government hospitals, which receive the bulk of patients.

To ensure generic medicines are available to all, the panel suggested that these be sold across board.

The Prime Minister, sources added, was impressed by the recommendations and asked the panel to meet him again and prepare a full-fledged report based on the suggestions. There is a likelihood that some of these recommendations may find a place in the forthcoming Union Budget also.

This newspaper has already reported that the Budget this time is likely to focus more on social sector issues. The panel also recommended that there should be one professor for two medical post-graduates.