PESHAWAR: The health department has decided to engage private hospitals in the provincial capital to handle the influx of critically-ill coronavirus patients to the government facilities.

The decision was made during a meeting held on Thursday with special secretary (health) Amir Tareen in the chair and chief health sector reforms unit Dr Shahid Younas and representatives of the medical teaching institutions and healthcare commission in attendance.

The meeting decided that the department would make public private partnership agreements with Peshawar’s Rehman Medical Institute (RMI) and North-West General Hospital (NWGH) to use their infrastructure for the management of serious Covid-19 cases.

Officials said around 70 per cent of the Covid-19 deaths in the province were reported in the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH), Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC), which had allocated a total of 370 beds for Covid-19 patients.

Officials say Peshawar fast running out of space

They said those hospitals were rapidly running out of space, which prompted the government to find an alternate source of managing such cases.

Health secretary Syed Imtiaz Hussain Shah told Dawn that the department was designing a PPP model through the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Foundation (HF) to ensure the best care of Covid-19 patients in Peshawar.

“RMI and NWGH may be included in the initiative. We are also investing in LRH, KTH and HMC to scale up their capacity,” he said.

The secretary said efforts were also under way to establish high dependency units with oxygen supply in the public sector hospital of Nishtarabad, Maulvi Jee Hospital and Women and Children’s Hospital to handle the growing patient flow.

HF managing director Dr Jan Baz Afridi briefed the meeting about Covid-19 crisis and patient arrivals in hospitals.

The participants showed concern about the alarming increase in Covid-19 incidence and decided to hire the services of private hospitals to cope with emergency patients.

They formed two committees to ascertain the situation with regard to demand and supply. One committee will be overseen by the director-general health services (DGHS) with directors of the Peshawar-based MTIs and a nominee of the health secretariat as its members.

The other committee supervised by the HF and consisting of the representatives of HCC and technical and procurement specialists from DGHS and MTI hospitals and health secretariat will look into the supply aspect, including PPP rules for inking agreements with private hospitals.

Dr Jan Baz said the RMI and NWGH had offered services for the management of Covid-19 patients at the ‘actual cost’ and that a similar model had already been implemented in Sindh.

Earlier, representatives of MTIs showed concern about the escalating increase in coronavirus cases.

They said hospital ICUs were close to reaching the capacity, so serious Covid-19 patients would need additional services.

The MTI representatives proposed the hiring of private hospitals before the situation gets out of control.

The MTI representatives said public hospitals lacked enough ICU beds to deal with a projected wave of coronavirus cases, so preparing for the worst situation in advance was a very reasonable move.

They also discussed the idea of adding additional ICU beds to MTIs but feared that the move could turn out to be a source of virus transmission due to overcrowding.

The meeting was informed that after getting the government’s approval, proposals regarding cost and other matters would be sought from the private hospitals, while the HCC would be tasked with monitoring the quality of services given to patients.

The officials said the HCC had already presented a list of private health facilities across the province for Covid-19 cases management and that the same could be replicated in other parts of the province if the situation demanded.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2020