JK admin to start audit of prescriptions at govt medical institutions

The Jammu and Kashmir health department will constitute committees to audit prescriptions to check unethical practices by government doctors.

Prescription audit committees will be formed at government medical colleges, and at district and sub-district levels, an official spokesman said on Friday.

The union territory's administration has also ordered that a grievance redressal mechanism be set up to look into complaints of professional misconduct and unethical practices by government doctors, he said.

Officials on these committees will collect photocopies of at least one per cent of the total prescriptions issued every day from the out-patient and in-patient departments of medical institutions, he said quoting an order.

"The collected prescriptions will be scrutinised by the prescription audit committees to check whether it is written legibly in capital letters with the name of the doctor, his or her signature and registration number, generic drugs are prescribed and preference given to drugs which are available free of cost at hospitals," he said.

The spokesman said the committees will also scrutinise the prescriptions to see if unnecessary diagnostics test have not been prescribed and patients have not been referred to private clinics or specialists.