Krishnagar, July 28: The Nadia authorities have cracked the whip on government doctors following a charge their colleagues across the state also face ? insisting on reports from diagnostic centres of their choice.

On Sunday, Dr R.K. Pal of Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Hospital in Kalyani asked relatives of Pareshnath Sikdar, who had suffered a stroke, to get a CT scan done from a particular private facility.

When Sikdar’s son Subhas had the test done from another place, where services were more affordable, Pal refused to treat the patient.

The hospital served a showcause notice on Pal after Subhas, who “felt insulted”, lodged a complaint with the hospital superintendent.

The district deputy chief medical officer of health, Mohan Basu, said no doctor would be allowed to recommend a diagnostic centre or pathological laboratory. “Patients and their relatives will choose the place where a test will be done. The JNM Hospital authorities were right in showcausing the doctor.”

Pal refused comment. Told to submit his reply to the notice by this evening, he sought two more days from the hospital superintendent.

Basu said: “We’ll soon introduce requisition slips for diagnostic tests with only the hospital’s name on it. There will be no name or signature of the doctor on it.”

The hospital in Kalyani ? 50 km from the city ? among the best in the district, does not have a CT scan facility and patients have no choice but to get the test done from private centres.

Director of health services K.C. Barui said in Calcutta it shouldn’t matter where a CT scan is done. Unlike, say, a blood test, where the diagnosis is based entirely on the findings of the report. “A good doctor should be able to interpret a CT scan report on his own.”

“What the doctor in Kalyani has done is unethical. An inquiry is on,” he added.

Subhas, a resident of Nadia’s Haringhata, about 40 km from Calcutta, said the centre in Kalyani where he had got his father’s CT scan done was “a well known one”.

“But before even seeing the report, the doctor told me it was full of errors,” he wrote in his complaint.

“He scolded me for my lack of knowledge and asked me to get my father checked up by another doctor, who would take charge two hours later.”

Subhas had his father released from the Kalyani hospital and took him to SSKM in Calcutta. “I don’t want doctors like him (Pal) to treat my father,” he said.

It may not be much different in Calcutta. The deputy chief medical officer of Nadia said the problem exists across the state.