PESHAWAR: The health department has put on hold the process of outsourcing 58 hospitals till a decision is made about the pending amount of the already contracted out health facilities to private parties in the province.

The health department has linked contracting out more hospitals to government’s approval about availability of funds and has stopped the process midway, according to officials.

An inquiry is also under way to evaluate the performance of the 11 contacted out hospitals before release of the outstanding amount of Rs938 million to the private organisations.

“Health Foundation, which has already completed 50 per cent work on contracting out more hospitals, has suspended the process and is awaiting a green signal from the government,” officials told this scribe.

They said that healthcare services in 110-bed Category C Hospital in Mirali and 40-bed Category D Hospital in Razmak in North Waziristan tribal district were likely to suffer owing to non-release of funds by the government. Some of the organisations failed to implement the agreements inked with the government under Public Private Partnership Act, 2016, for improvement of services in the outsources hospitals, they added.

Health dept awaits govt’s approval about availability of funds

They said that the committee comprising secretaries of law, health and finance departments had started an inquiry into the funds to find out as to how the amount released to the partner organisations earlier was spent by them.

Officials said that the private organisations, as per agreement, were required to recruit staff in the under-performing government hospitals to facilitate patients. “Some of the organisations haven’t recruited specialists and haven’t installed the required equipments to ensure diagnostic services and other procedures, therefore, a transparent probe is under way to save the public money and initiate action,” they added.

They said that the respective district health officers and district administrations were dissatisfied with the performance of many outsourced hospitals. They said that the partner organisations didn’t fulfil their obligations to fill up vacant positions of surgeons, gynaecologists and paediatricians at lucrative packages despite signing contracts with the government in 2016.

Sources said that private organisations were complaining that local employees didn’t perform duty in a befitting manner but wanted to get salaries as they did in other health facilities. “We have conveyed this concern to the government to improve our human resource position. In some areas, local people have also staged protests against handing over the government-owned facilities to NGOs,” they added.

They said that the private organisations conducted survey prior to signing agreements to run the hospitals in collaboration with government. Under the contract, they receive funds as usual from the finance department and are at liberty to spend it as per needs through district committees.

Officials, however, said that funds would be made available to those organisations, whose performance was in accordance with the contract but they were unable to pay to their employees because of the non-availability of funds.

They said that lack of qualified staff was the main issue of the organisations running the outsourced hospitals. They said that hospitals in Punjab and Sindh were also run under the same arrangements. Financially stable private organisations have the capacity to deploy the desired human resources to increase visits by patients and provide medical, surgical, women and children and accident and emergency services in the outsourced hospitals.

“Given the ongoing issue, we have requested the government to guide us regarding contracting out 58 more hospitals for which the process is underway. The law is very good but it requires a mechanism to check its operations,” said officials. They said that some organisations showed improvement as the number of patients increased in hospitals after being outsourced but the contract should be implemented in letter and spirit because the government issued budget for the welfare of people.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2023