PESHAWAR: Patient care at 13 outsourced government hospitals continues to suffer as the private organisations running these facilities haven’t received due payments since July last year due to the ongoing up-gradation work at the accountant general office.

Officials told Dawn that the health department had released Rs413 million to the hospitals outsourced to private organisations under the public-private partnership initiative but the amount had yet to reach the recipients, causing services at the hospitals to decline.

They said the department had been contracting out under-performing hospitals to private organisations through the Health Foundation (HF) to improve patient care.

The officials said the HF had so far outsourced 19 hospitals for which the government issued a budget on a quarterly basis subject to verification of their performance by the committees comprising officials of health department, district administration and HF.

Health Foundation chief says ‘technical issues’ caused problem; promises early clearance of dues

They, however, said 13 of the hospitals had been awaiting the July-Sept payments, to the financial hardship of employees.

The officials also said another installment for the Oct-Dec period was overdue but the organisations were anxiously awaiting payment for which the money had already been released.

Last month, the district health officer (DHO) of Upper Kohistan wrote a letter to the HF, demanding termination of the contract awarded to the National Integrated Development Foundation to run the district headquarters hospital in Dassu.

The DHO insisted that the organisation had totally failed to provide services to the people due to staff strikes.

“There are only two consultants but according to agreement, their number should be 11. Besides, the indoor admissions are also next to zero,” he noted.

The HF’s managing director later sought an explanation from NIDF, which rejected the DHO’s assertions and insisted that though its dues hadn’t been cleared, it had been paying salaries to the employees.

It also said that the hospital had seven consultants and that for the first time in Kohistan’s history, 437 major and 9.256 minor surgeries in orthopaedic, general surgery, gynaecology and ENT cases had been carried out.

The NIDF claimed that all those payments and activities had been verified by the health department’s Independent Monitoring Unit.

It added that as per clinical audit, the patients had been getting quality care, with the number of investigations done in the hospital confirming it.

Sources in the health department insisted that the situation with all organisations managing those hospitals was more or less the same as they struggled to pay staff members due to a serious financial crisis.

They added that the organisations were required by the agreements to get funds from the government every three month but would ensure smooth provision of services to hospital visitors.

The sources said the government had been outsourcing its hospitals due to unwillingness of its employees to be posted there, with the organisations supposed to ensure that services related to all specialties and investigations are available to visitors.

They said the hospitals were outsourced after surveys found the services not to be up to the mark despite budget release by the government.

The sources said under agreements, the HF, respective DHOs and organisations were required to ensure quality services and receive budgets for medicines and other expenditure as well as payment of salaries to staff members.

They, however, said delayed payment to the organisations had become a chronic issue.

The sources said the new HF management recently developed a fund flow mechanism under which the organisations get payments within 20 days of the bill submission but the delay in payments was caused by up-gradation work at the accountant general office.

When contacted, HF managing director Dr Khizer Hayat Khan attributed the matter to “technical issues”.

“The government has released due funds, and the organisations will get them soon,” he said.

Dr Khan said that the organisations managing hospitals were bound by contracts to provide uninterrupted services to patients, so those not doing so would face action.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2026