PESHAWAR: The health department has warned seven private hospitals of cancellation of their contracts for free treatment of the people under Social Health Protection Initiative over violation of the agreement.

“Authorities have received various complaints against the hospitals for charging or mistreating the patients, which is against the rules under the SHPI which ensures cashless treatment of all the residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” sources told this scribe.

According to them, the concerned hospitals have been warned to mitigate the grievances of patients otherwise their contract agreements would be cancelled.

Currently, there are 166 public and private hospitals in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that are providing free treatment to the patients for which they are paid by the government through State Life Insurance Corporation.

Official says cancellation of contracts of empanelled hospitals continuous process

Dr Mohammad Riaz Tanoli, the chief executive officer of SHPI Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said that there were 524 hospitals countrywide that had been empanelled for the free treatment of the people.

“We have 7.6 million registered families in the province who are entitled to seek free health services in any hospital in any city of the country. Each family is eligible to get free treatment up to Rs1 million,” he said. He added that selection of hospitals for the programme was a long process during which their infrastructure and human resources were assessed and those fulfilling the criteria were selected.

“There is a continuous check on the performance of the hospitals and a complaint cell has been established to look into the problems of the patients at the designated hospitals. Last year, we suspended the contracts of six hospitals and some of them were allowed to work when they returned the money to the patients,” said Dr Riaz.

He said that that an assessment exercise would start in February next year to ascertain about the standard of services being provided to the patients by the hospitals. “All the hospitals, which have been empanelled for the last few years since the inception of the programme, will be subjected to inspection to see if they have the desired facilities in line with the agreements,” he added.

Dr Riaz said that they awarded different contracts and gave different rates for different diseases and surgeries to hospitals on the basis of their infrastructure and human resources. He said that some of the hospitals were eligible for chronic diseases while others were meant to carry out minor surgeries and procedures and those violating the contracts would be shown the door.

He said that cancellation of contracts of the already empanelled hospitals and taking new ones on the panel was a continuous process.

“We are going to assess the facilities at 28 new hospitals for the programme because we require more hospitals after extension of the free health initiative to the entire population of the province in November last year,” he said. He added that there were standard operating procedure (SOPs) for the empanelled hospitals and those desisting from the terms of the contract would no longer remain on the panel.

Dr Riaz said that the health facilities were issued a warning to mend their ways and satisfy the patients and if they failed to do so their contract would be cancelled.

He said that during the past few years, the hospitals upgraded their services to be able to get on the panel of SHPI and earn money. The public and private sector hospitals in many districts improved their services due to which people got treatment in their native areas, he said.

“The government wants to increase number of hospitals but provision of quality treatment is pre-requisite to get empanelled,” said Dr Riaz.

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2021