PESHAWAR: The provincial government has approved basic minimum health delivery package for secondary level care facilities to define the level of care and benefit patients in their respective areas.

“So far, the people don’t know about the availability of services at their respective health facilities,” sources said. They added that it would help people to know about availability of specialists for certain diseases and other diagnostic services.

The health services package aims to let people know about the services they can get at certain facilities, according to relevant officials.

Last week, the health department approved the package after compilation of recommendations by different committees to inform the people as to what type of medical, ENT, eye, obstetric care and others they may get at the district headquarters hospitals, tehsil headquarters hospitals and category D hospitals.

“The health department has also started an exercise to ascertain the cost of the package approved by the government and make budgetary plans to implement it,” sources said. They added that within a month, the department would make calculations regarding expenses of the package with regard to medicines, equipments and human resources.

Package to help patients to know about availability of health services in their area

“The criteria would be applied to all facilities,” said sources. They said that health department would display public information about the services available in the secondary care facilities along with a full structure of the respective facilities to give clear picture to the patients.

The new mechanism will make it clear to the population that the secondary facility in their respective areas has medical, surgical, child and gynea specialists owing to which they will visit it when the need arises.

“It will also enable people to transport their patients to tertiary care hospitals in case facilities for certain ailments are not available in their area,” said sources.

They said that prior information about the services would enable people to visit the facility or not. “The people may expect treatment for the specialties at their hospitals,” they added.

Sources said that minimum service package offered both preventive and curative services. “So far, the government has been making haphazard allocation to the health facilities due to which the resources couldn’t be utilised effectively,” they added.

Sources said that approval of package would also lead to effective spending of resources and would benefit patients. The government had to implement rational plans and provide healthcare to people within limited resources, they said.

To fully implement the package, the health department has recruited 2,700 doctors, 1,100 paramedics and 300 nurses.

A few years ago, the health department had approved a minimum health delivery package for primary level facilities on the basis of which the plan for secondary level facilities was also approved, sources said.

According to senior medical consultants, it would help doctors to refer patients to another hospital with the desired facilities. “In this way, a proper referral system will come in play and unnecessary workload at tertiary hospitals will be reduced,” they added.

Published in Dawn November 21st, 2016