Punjab's Healthcare Boost: 300 Specialist Doctors Join State Hospitals

A spokesperson for the Chief Minister's Office said the Cabinet gave the nod to empanel 300 specialist doctors across 12 specialities, including medicine, paediatrics, psychiatry, dermatology, chest and TB, surgery, gynaecology, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, ENT, and anaesthesiology across government health facilities.

This step will significantly augment specialist availability and improve the quality of secondary healthcare delivery for the people of Punjab.

The empanelment of specialists will be done at the district level through Civil Surgeons, and the empanelled specialist shall be entitled to an empanelment fee per patient for various services like OPD, IPD, emergency calls, major and minor surgeries and procedures and others.

The Cabinet also gave its concurrence to insert Rule 28A- Uniform Disciplinary and Appellate Framework under the Punjab Cooperative Societies Rules of 1963. This will ensure the removal of duplicate appellate channels, avoid conflicting decisions within the same board or its committees, clarify the chain of command in disciplinary proceedings, and ensure that appeals are heard only once within the institution.

This will also help protect the rights of employees by ensuring due process under a clear, uniform framework and strengthening institutional accountability by defining authority at each level, besides bringing uniformity and consistency across all apex institutions and central cooperative banks functioning under the cooperative sector in Punjab.

The Cabinet also gave approval to the Punjab Minor Minerals Rules of 2013 in accordance with the Punjab State Minor Minerals (Amendment) Policy of 2025. These new rules and modifications were needed to be added or substituted in the existing Punjab Minor Minerals Rules of 2013 for allocation of mining rights to mining lease holders of crusher mining sites and landowner mining sites to be allotted in the state.

- IANS