By Ramesh Mathew/Staff Reporter

The Qatar Council for Healthcare Practitioners (QCHP) will do away with paper and turn to electronic methods in its day-to-day operations from January 2015 as part of its efforts to promote sustainability and to be more eco-friendly.

The initiative will help save a large quantity of resources and reduce costs by nearly 96% from the prevailing manual methods, said  Dr Jamal Rashid al-Khanji, acting CEO of QCHP, yesterday.

The QCHP, he said, will continue to issuing the physical medical licence cards along with the electronic version for the next one month, starting from the New Year.

After the one-month period is over the paper system will be done away with completely and electronic licensing would become the order of the day, said Dr al-Khanji.

Upon expiry of a healthcare practitioner’s licence, the word “expired” will appear against his or her name on the electronic system, which the QCHP official said would ensure credibility and transparency  in dealing with patients and the public.

Further, evaluation certificates, training and examination letters will also be issued electronically by the QCHP. Also, the council will issue police clearance letters to those concerned as part of an agreement signed recently between the QCHP and the Ministry of Interior (MoI).

Dr al-Khanji also observed that there has been a massive fall in the number of customers visiting the Council’s counters owing to the introduction of some new electronic processes in recent years. While there were 11,650 counter customers in 2012, the number has come down to 2,600 so far this year.

Compared to the previous year, the figures came down by 58% in 2012, and the last two years saw the numbers falling approximately by 30% and 13% respectively, he said.

This is because of such practices as the implementation of the online verification, publishing the guidelines on the Supreme Council of Health (SCH) website, and enhancement of the registration/licensing electronic system.

Similarly there has been a considerable fall in customer service transactions such as payment, replying to queries, radiation (at health centres) and answering incoming mails etc between September and December this year, it was told.

While there were 1,400 payment transactions in September, the figure came down to 400 this month. Similarly, the counter staff had to attend to nearly 440 queries in September. The latest figure showed only 150 such queries had to be attended to this month.