PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Tuesday passed a law to give autonomy to the government owned medical teaching institutions and affiliated teaching hospitals in the province to improve medical education and patient care.

The law titled ‘The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015,’ was passed with amendments of several opposition members. The law was tabled by Provincial Minister for Health Shehram Khan Tarakai.

Any doctor appointed as consultant in a medical teaching institution after commencement of this law would be bound to do private practice within the hospital.

The doctors had protested against the bill arguing that they had not been taken into confidence regarding the new law. However, after a late night meeting on Monday with government functionaries, the doctors called off their strike after assurances by the government that their suggestions would be incorporated in the bill. The treasury benches were of the view that the bill was passed from the provincial assembly with some amendments suggested by the doctors during the last night meeting.

Prior to passage of the law, the opposition members in the provincial assembly were also taken into confidence about it during an hour-long meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Pervez Khattak. The members of the opposition benches had reservations over certain clauses of the bill.

The new law is aimed at improving performance, enhancing effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness of medical institutions for provision of quality healthcare services to people.

The law provides option to all the consultants, working in government hospitals, to either do private practice within medical teaching institutions or to do it outside the hospital.

New legislation to improve healthcare services in the province

The existing employees of the hospitals if opt for the private practice within the hospital, may be entitled to increase in salary, adjustment, bonuses or other ancillary benefits.

A board of governors would be set up under the law for each medical teaching institution to administer and manage its affairs. Maximum members in the BoG would be 10 with three from government departments and seven from private sector.

The board will be responsible to ensure the objectives of medical teaching institutions within the overall ambit of government policy. It will also provide strategic direction. The board will also periodically evaluate the performance of the medical teaching institutions according to the set targets particularly related to efficiency, effectiveness and equity with attendant reward and discipline measures.

Each board will appoint a full-time hospital director for a period of three years on the recommendation of a recruitment committee. The new law states that the hospital director shall possess a recognised master degree in hospital management or health services management or business management or public health.

A medical director of a hospital, to be appointed by the BoG, would be a non-practicing health official.

The provincial assembly also passed ‘The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Care Commission Bill, 2015’.

Speaker Asad Qaiser formed a house committee of all parliamentary leaders to resolve all contentious issues with the federal government being pending since long.

Earlier, speaking on a point of order, parliamentary leader of ANP Sardar Hussain Babak drew the attention of the house towards provincial issues which couldn’t be resolved owing to poor coordination between the provincial and federal governments.

He suggested to the speaker to form a committee of parliamentary parties to sit with the federal government for amicable resolution of different issues related to net hydel profit, National Highway Authority (NHA) and implementation of the resolutions passed by the provincial assembly.

Several members of the opposition and treasury benches criticised NHA for not allowing people, stranded on both sides of Lowari Top, to use the under-construction tunnel. They said that it was a longstanding demand of the dwellers of district Chitral to allow them to use the under-construction tunnel in January and February because of the heavy snow in those months. But the NHA was not allowing them, they said.

The speaker adjourned the session till February 6.

Published in Dawn January 14th , 2015

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