PESHAWAR: The health department is carrying out an exercise to allow hospitals to charge patients on the basis of their standard of services being provided to the people under Social Health Protection Initiative.

“The move seeks to give unformed rates to the hospitals falling in same categories. There will be grades of hospitals from one to six, which will be allotted after an assessment of all the hospitals, empanelled under the programme for free treatment of patients,” Dr Aamir Rafiq, the provincial deputy director (administration) of SHPI, told Dawn.

He said that currently there were different rates for treatment of patients on Sehat Card Plus in the empanelled hospitals that created issues. He said that the new mechanism was approved by the government to ensure that the hospitals got uniform rates. “There will be different rates for hospitals falling in category one to six,” he added.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which pioneered the free health insurance programme in 2016, has so far provided cashless treatment to one million people.

Health facilities will be allowed to charge patients according to their standard of services

So far, more than Rs25 billion has been spent on providing free health services to the people of the province. The government has allocated Rs22 billion for the programme in the current fiscal year that also included Rs1 billion for liver transplantation. The liver transplantation was included in the programme in January this year.

“The exercise will begin soon after the month of Ramazan and all the registered health facilities would be subjected to thorough evaluations on the basis of their services, availability of doctors and infrastructure. The facilities would be awarded grades and they would be authorised charge patients according to the grade,” said Dr Aamir.

Presently, the province has about 190 public and private hospitals where 7.4 million families are entitled to seek treatment without being charged.

He said that government signed different contracts with each of the hospitals according to which they charged the patients for certain treatment, operations and other procedures. He said that there were also complaints of lesser rates from some hospitals due to which the government decided to assess the services and grant rates according to their services.

Dr Aamir said that the grading system would allow the hospitals to receive unformed charges from the government in lieu of patients’ treatment. For instance, the hospitals falling in grade-6 would get the highest charges as there are about three hospitals including Aga Khan University Hospital Karachi, Shifa International Hospital Islamabad and Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, which are also JSI-certified and the secondary category will be grades 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1.

After completion of the assessment, the hospitals wanting to be elevated to upper level would move applications along with Rs15,000 fee after which they would be reassessed. A proforma has been developed on which the facilities in each of the hospitals would be enlisted before granting them different levels.

Dr Aamir said that there were about 700 registered hospitals throughout the country where the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were eligible to seek cashless treatment. However, the people should have valid identity cards issued by Nadra. Each family is entitled to receive treatment up to Rs1 million.

So far, seven liver transplants have been conducted under SHPI, each costing Rs5 million. While the tally of kidney transplants is over 65.

Patients also receive subsequent free treatment for liver and kidney transplants. Most of the kidney transplants have been conducted at Rehman Medical Institute Peshawar whereas the liver transplantations have been carried out in Islamabad and Lahore-based hospitals.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2022