RAWALPINDI, Feb 2: The administration of the autonomous hospitals has so far not presented the situational analysis report to the Board of Governors (BoGs), as was required according to the Health Ordinance 2002.
It is believed that the report acts as a guideline for improvement in the institutions.
According to the Punjab Medical and Health Institutions Rules and Ordinance 2002, “The principal executive officer (PEO) shall in the initial 3 months, after taking over charge, produce a situational analysis report on the performance benchmark status of the institutions under his command.” The report is, therefore, overdue despite the incumbent PEO took charge almost six months back.
A BoG member said: “The situation has obviously worsened after the installation of the autonomy, therefore, there is no need to bother about a report.”
On the other hand, the worst affected is the financial health of these institutions, which directly hits the patients care. Last year, the government enhanced the salaries of employees, but the amount required to foot the bill of increased salaries of the autonomous hospitals’ employees was not provided on the ground that they had been working with the autonomous institutions.
Sources said the employees were since then getting salaries from the contingency budget.
The hospitals haven’t got the third quarter of their annual budget from the government, which should have been received by January, the sources said.
Similarly, the vacancies of medical and para-medical staff at these hospitals are yet to be filled. The only recruitment made so far was for the Rawalpindi Medical College Complex.
A large number of electro-medical equipment is out of order and most of the emergency wards lack life-saving equipment.
After grappling with the problem of non-availability of drugs even at the emergency wards, the BoG has finally decided to give up claims of providing free medicine and started providing subsidised medicines.
At least 80 beds in Holy Family Hospital, which are spare due to shifting of surgical wards, are still awaiting reallocation. The commissioning of the main operation theatres of HFH is yet to be done due to which the operations are being conducted in the theatres of emergency ward.