PESHAWAR: Medical teaching institutions continue to increase the rates of OPD slips, admission and operation theatre as Khyber Teaching Hospital has notified an increase of about 250 per cent in its charges.
In a recent notification, Khyber Teaching Hospital, one of the oldest teaching facilities of the province, revised the fee. According to the notification, the new fee for operation has been fixed at Rs500, admission at Rs500 and OPD and emergency slip at Rs50. The increase was announced after approval by the Board of Governors of the health facility in a meeting following which the hospital director issued the increase with immediate effect.
Prior to the upward revision of the fee, patients used to pay Rs20 in lieu of OPD and emergency slip, Rs100 for admission in medical ward and Rs300 as operation theatre charges.
KTH is not the only MTI, which has increased these rates, as all other teaching hospitals have been increasing these charges from time to time. Increase in charges affects patients visiting these public sector facilities.
KTH announces 250pc raise in fee
There is also difference in charges of MTIs as rate for OPD slip in Ayub Teaching Hospital is Rs30, admission Rs70 and zero operation theatre charges.
Administrators of MTIs argue that they have nothing to do with decrease or increase in charges because it is the domain of the respective Board of Governors to decide such matters and respective hospital directors issue office orders subsequently.
According to them, prior to the enforcement of Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015, health department had the authority to fix rates for users’ charges in the hospitals of the whole province. Now MTI-covered hospitals take such decisions as per directives of relevant BoGs.
The people in MTIs also pay Rs100 to get patient card that is one-time payment and patients are not charged in their follow-up visits but their record is entered into system.
In Lady Reading Hospital, the oldest and biggest health facility of the province, patients pay Rs50 for OPD and emergency slip, Rs500 as admission fee for medical ward and Rs800 for surgical ward while the operation theatre charges are covered in Sehat Card Plus, the free health insurance programme of the government.
LRH spokesperson Mohammad Asim told Dawn that those were nominal charges as compared to that of private hospitals located in Dabgari Gardens and elsewhere in the province.
In Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar, patients pay Rs50 for OPD and emergency slip, Rs250 for operation theatre and Rs300 as admission fee.
After the enforcement of MTIRA, after which hospitals are governed by the respective BoGs instead of health department, these charges have been increased manifold. Patients have to pay more for ultrasound, X-rays, MRI and CT scans as well as laboratory tests.
A medical director at one of the MTIs told Dawn that generation of revenue by those hospitals was one of the main objectives of MTIRA owing to which the rates of different investigations had gone up. Still the charges of public sector hospitals were far lesser than private sector, he said. The reason for increase in these charges is raise in the cost of electricity and X-ray films and reagents used in tests, which are imported from abroad.
However, patients argue that public sector hospitals cannot be compared with the private sector because they get budget from government through which all items used in X-ray and pathology sections are purchased.
Situation in most of the 10 MTIs in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the same as BoGs continue to increase users’ charges to generate revenue.
Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2025
