Anonymous complaints hamper Medical Council probes

The newly elected office-bearers said they have started taking up the complaints that have been pending for long, most of them alleging negligence. There are 129 in all. “We have barely looked into 25 per cent of the pending cases, mostly routine ones. A majority of the cases are complaints from patients alleging negligence by hospitals,” said council president Dr K Senthil.

Some of the complaints may warrant further action based on the content, he said, adding: “We will decide what has to be done during our meeting on Wednesday.”

Some of the complaints were made anonymously, and are bound to be dropped unless the complainants come forward to provide more information. “There are many cases by anonymous complainants. We are trying to trace them to gather more information, and have sent letters to the addresses they provided. If they fail to respond, we will have to let go of those cases,” Dr Senthil added.

The new council members said they would consider all cases on the basis of merit. No case would be left out arbitrarily and all aspects would be duly considered before arriving at a decision, they claimed. 

After the elections that installed a new set of office-bearers, the council suspended three doctors and issued statutory warnings in two different cases.

An important case the council looked into was that of a Coimbatore-based doctor who attempted to kill her hospitalised father in 2016. Her attempts to yank the IV line of her ailing father were caught on CCTV, which led to calls for banning her from practicing medicine. “We have suspended her for one year,” said an official from the council.