PESHAWAR: Amendments proposed by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department to the law for regulating charges of doctors, hospitals and labs have gotten stuck in the slow lane, say officials.

They told Dawn that the health department began drafting changes to the Health Care Commission Act, 2015, in July 2020 to fix those rates on the orders of the Peshawar High Court and finalised the draft a year ago before sending it to the law department for vetting.

The officials said the draft amendments were to be laid before the provincial assembly for approval, but that hadn’t happened for months.

They said the current law didn’t allow the Health Care Commission to fix the consultation fee of doctors, hospital charges for operations and other surgical procedures, and lab testing rates, and therefore, amendments to it were proposed for giving that authority to the regulator for public and private sector health centres to benefit patients.

Official hopes Health Care Commission to be empowered soon

The officials said currently, the province didn’t have any mechanism to fix rates for diagnostic services in labs, surgeries and other procedures in hospitals, or consultation with medical practitioners.

They added that the high court asked the health department on several occasions to introduce a mechanism to fix those charges.

When contacted, HCC chief executive officer Dr Nadeem Akhtar confirmed a delay in the proposed amendments to the law about regulating medical charges.

“The sought-after changes to the HCC Act have been vetted by the law department. Now, they await the assembly’s approval for enforcement,” he told Dawn.

Dr Akhtar said currently, the HCC didn’t have the legal authority to fix the charges of doctors and healthcare establishments, but after the proposed amendments were made to the law, it would begin doing so.

He said the draft amendments, on which both the health and law departments worked, awaited approval by lawmakers for enforcement.

The HCC chief said the commission registered hospitals and issued them licences after examining the quality of the services they offered.

“Since our formation in 2015, we have issued licences to 26 hospitals, including 24 private and two public, and registered around 14,000 health centres and pathological labs in the province,” he said.

Officials in the health department told Dawn that it was neither the domain of the HCC nor the health department’s to fix rates for hospitals and diagnostic outlets in the province.

They said that it had turned out to be a big issue for patients to pay high fees to doctors for consultation, to labs for X-ray, MRI, CT scan and other tests, and to hospitals for treatment.

The officials said the department proposed amendments to the HCC Act after learning that the Punjab Healthcare Commission had the power to fix medical charges in the province.

They said many junior medical consultants in the province got more fees than their seniors, while the rates for lab investigations also varied from one centre to another.

The officials said approval of the proposed changes to the law got delayed as there was no elected government in the last one year to pursue the matter.

“Now, we hope that the Act will be amended soon,” an official told Dawn.

He said in July 2020, the Peshawar High Court ordered the HCC to fix charges for Covid-19 and dengue testing in consultation with private labs.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2024