The question has been asked by a single bench in pursuance of its earlier orders in which the authorities were asked to ensure that MLRs and PMRs are all in typed out or in computerised format.
THE PUNJAB and Haryana High Court has summoned the health secretary of the Punjab government seeking an explanation on why stenographers or data entry operators cannot be made available to doctors, along the lines of Haryana and Chandigarh, for recording medico-legal (MLR) and post-mortem reports (PMR).
Doctors in Punjab presently write such reports manually and the court has observed that the time spent in the process can be utilised in treating patients.
Principal Secretary of Punjab’s Health and Family Welfare Department Dr D K Tiwari had in a written response stated before the court earlier that it is not feasible for attending doctors to dictate observations regarding patient injuries in the presence of general public as the same are to be kept secret to ensure no untoward incidents happen in the hospitals. The court has asked Dr Tiwari to remain present on March 17 to explain his statement.
The court has also questioned the “long time frame of two weeks” being provided for uploading the reports into the centralised software and observed that same appears to be a result of inadequate staff. Dr Tiwari has also been asked to file a reply on when recruitment of sufficient number of stenographers or data entry operators will be completed for all hospitals.
The question has been asked by a single bench in pursuance of its earlier orders in which the authorities were asked to ensure that MLRs and PMRs are all in typed out or in computerised format. The court had noted that virtually on a daily basis, MLRs and PMRs are being shown which are hand-written and very often not decipherable. Haryana has informed the court that no manual reporting of MLRs and PMRs is being done in any government hospitals and same are recorded through computer software by data entry operators.
The court has also has asked the health secretaries of both Punjab and Haryana governments to explain why an annual budgetary allocation for the software being developed by the National Informatics Centre Services Inc has not been done by Punjab and Haryana for 2020, even if the same was to be done within January.
The software is being developed to ensure that computerised postmortem reports and medico legal reports are issued by the states, and the budget is shared between the two states and Union Territory Chandigarh in the ratio of 43:43:14.