SevenHills Hospital launches nationwide hunt for 600 doctors

Ads up on top job portals, salaries offered doubled

At a time when jobs have dried up and scores of people are losing employment every day, job portals in the country are prominently displaying vacancies advertised by SevenHills Hospital. One of Mumbai’s largest Covid facilities with 1,004 beds, the Andheri hospital has been struggling for staff almost from the time it was reopened more than two months.

In its latest recruitment drive which the hospital hopes to turn PAN India with online advertising, it has called for 100 intensivists and the same number of anaesthetists, ten nephrologists, five radiologists (minimum qualification MD for all posts), 200 with MBBS degree, 100 Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery degree-holders and the same number of Bachelor of Homeopathy Medicine and Surgery degree-holders.

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SevenHills, which has 176 doctors and needs at least another 600, is offering salaries way above the normal range, indicating Mumbai’s urgency and desperation for healthcare professions. The MDs are offered Rs 2 lakh a month, the MBBS Rs 80,000, the Ayurveda specialists Rs 60,000, and the homoeopaths Rs 50,000. Additional benefits: boarding and lodging, and 15 days of quarantine period in a month. Under normal circumstances, salaries are 50% of what the hospital is offering.

Almost every government run medical facility in Mumbai is struggling due to lack of enough healthcare experts, prompting the government to issue a memo to 25,000 private doctors to join the Covid battle.

SevenHills, however, has witnessed excruciatingly difficult days. This newspaper reported last month the utter lack of hygiene at the hospital, patients not given a fresh set of clothes for days and having to use stinking toilets and soiled bedsheets.

The hospital in-charge, Dr Balkrishna Adsul, is hoping that money motivates doctors to apply. “The money is good, doctors have to work just 15 days a month. We are hoping for a very good response to our online advertisement from across the country,” he said.

The hospital wants to equip at least 300 beds with ICU facilities, but the shortage of intensivists is the stumbling block. It is currently able to operate only 68 ICU beds, of which 13 are managed by Reliance which has set up 250 beds there as part of its corporate social responsibility.