LAHORE, May 16: The provincial health department has declared that only those clinicians who actually perform surgeries (at autonomous teaching hospitals) will be paid for operations.

Until now, senior surgeons are also paid for even those surgeries (on private patients) that are actually performed by their subordinates. Their subordinates get nothing for all the work done by them.

“Usually, senior surgeons (professors) give a small portion of their monthly share from private patient surgeries with their subordinates. It is more like giving charity rather than paying them for their work,” a senior health official said on Wednesday. “Now junior doctors will be paid for their work,” he added.

It may be mentioned that the health department has recently fixed upper limits of major, medium and minor operations at the rate of Rs20,000, Rs10,000 and Rs1,500, respectively. The classification of major, medium and minor surgeries has been left at the discretion of clinicians. The fee ceiling for special operations like heart by-pass and neuro-surgery will be determined separately.

Similarly, the health department also fixed the rent of an air-conditioned room equipped with necessary facilities at Rs2,000 per day. The charges for a bed in private ward will be Rs500 per day. The health department also plans to develop VVIP rooms in autonomous hospitals for affluent class. The VVIP room rent will be charged at the rate of Rs5,000 per day.

When contacted, doctors and patient welfare societies representatives expressed their fear that the new rates would cost major operations in public hospitals even more than the fees charges in top-rated private hospitals.

When contacted, health minister Prof Mahmood Ahmad Chaudhry said the recently announced operation fees and room rent was just an ‘initial draft’. “The department will considerably slash these rates in the next meetings with the principal executive officers of autonomous hospitals,” he said.

Even the slashed rates will give a basic fee structure and each autonomous teaching hospital will be authorized with the approval of their respective boards of governors to fix their fees.

Answering another question that the new rates might divert the affluent towards private hospitals, he said patients visited private hospitals for particular clinicians and not for spacious rooms. He said the new Punjab Medical and Health Institutions Rules, 2002, had bound clinicians to do a procedural practice only at autonomous teaching hospitals. This policy, he said, would keep patients in autonomous hospitals, while the private hospitals would be compelled to appoint full-time doctors and nurses at much higher salaries.

“In this new situation, the charges of private hospitals will increase manifold and become unviable even for the affluent,” he said.

On the autonomous hospitals front, Prof Chaudhry said the provincial government would provide a one-time grant running in millions of rupees for their immediate renovation and improvement. Besides, he said, the health department was also planning to hire some spacious buildings for different autonomous hospitals to admit its private patients on a temporary basis.