PESHAWAR: Health Foundation has decided to outsource two more hospitals and install a PET/CT machine under public-private partnership programme at Hayatabad Medical Complex to ensure provision of quality diagnostic services to patients.

According to officials, the two health facilities that will be outsourced include Category-D Hospital Toi Khula, South Waziristan, and a rural health centre in Shagram, Chitral Upper. Health Foundation (HF), established under Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Foundation Act, 2016, has so far contracted out 19 hospitals to private organisations, mostly in merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Health Foundation has floated tenders for the purpose and interested firms fulfilling the desired criteria have been advised to apply till August 4 after which the necessary process will start for selection of successful bidders.

Officials said that the health facilities were already identified by survey teams, which found that they were not working properly and health workers were not willing to be posted there. In most of the outsourced hospitals, absenteeism on behalf of staff when they were run by health department prompted the government to contract out those facilities to ensure presence of staff, medicines and emergency services there.

CT scan machine to be installed under public-private partnership at HMC

Under the arrangements, the government pays full budget to private organisations, which are bound to hire the services of gynaecologists, surgeons, physicians, ophthalmologists, ENT doctors and other mandatory personnel to provide medical services to people.

“Most of the outsourced hospitals have shown good results due to which chief secretary has recently ordered authorities concerned to go for public-private partnership with organisations having the required capacity,” said officials. The violence-riddled merged districts are the main focus for outsourcing hospitals where people are not getting healthcare services despite the presence of huge buildings, installation of equipment and provision of budgetary allocation.

“Once a machine, goes out of order, people suffer because under government’s rules, the repair takes months while in contracted out facilities, private organisations will be responsible for quick repair and patients will not suffer,” officials said. Similarly, private organisation will take care of the stock of medicines as well as presence of doctors, nurses and paramedics to ensure that people get medical services in their own areas.

HF has also sought expression of interest from private organisations to install a PET-CT scan to help diagnose disease, such as cancer, plan treatment, or find out how well treatment is working at Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar.

“The private organisation selected for the purpose will be required to install, operate and maintain the machine,” officials said. They said that public-private partnership programme proved beneficial for installation of MRI and CT scanners at hospitals because they private organisations took care of machines that were promptly repaired while the ones installed by government had to remain out of order for months, once they went out of order.

They said that patients would not be charged more for the services as they would pay government’s rates, but they would get quality services through latest machine.

Officials said that as per government’s directives, more health facilities were being identified to be outsourced and more CT and MRI scanners would be installed at hospitals through public-private partnership. In district headquarters hospitals, CT scanner and X-ray plants remained out of orders for months and as a result patients were referred to private centres where the quality wasn’t up to the mark but patients paid more than the government’s rates, they added.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2025