Super speciality OPDs moved back to IGMC from Chamiyana hospital

Less than a month after the Outdoor Patient Department (OPD) services of super speciality departments were shifted to Chamiyana hospital, the departments have been brought back again to Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital in Shimla.

Following the orders of the Himachal Pradesh High Court on deferring the start of OPDs at the Chamiyana facility till the proper road connectivity was provided to the hospital, the government today issued a notification to this effect.

“We have received government orders today and will move all super speciality departments back to IGMC. From tomorrow, the OPDs will function at IGMC,” said Dr Brij Sharma, principal of Atal Super-Speciality Medical Institute at Chamiyana.

The OPDs of eight super specialty departments, including urology, cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology, plastic surgery, gastroenterology, neurology and CVTS, were shifted to Chamiyana on August 12. The plan was to shift the indoor patient and emergency services from IGMC to Chamiyana by September-end.

The decision to shift these departments, especially in the middle of the rainy season, to Chamiyana turned out to be counter-productive as patients faced a lot of inconvenience due to the lack of the proper road connectivity.

In two years, the Public Works Department (PWD) was unable to build a 3-km approach road from Bhattakuffar to the hospital wide enough for motor vehicles.

The PWD officials had said the road would complete by May 2024, but it was still incomplete. Apart from poor road connectivity, the lack of a canteen, chemist shops and on-campus residential facility for doctors and other staff are other hurdles in making the hospital run smoothly.

The hospital, built at a cost of over Rs 250 crore, was inaugurated in September 2022 by the then CM Jai Ram Thakur. The OPDs were started two years after the inauguration, but it is back to square one again.