 | Govt plans better treatment of EWS patients at pvt hospitals
Govt plans better treatment of EWS patients at pvt hospitals
Ananya Panda
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, Febrauary 10
In view of ensuring transparency in the treatment of patients under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS), the Delhi government is in process of bringing in a new mechanism under which 40 private hospitals, which have purchased lands on subsidised costs from the city's land agencies, would have to put the patients'contact details on display on the website.
Also, after the proposed cell for streamlining treatment for the EWS patients has been made functional, the Directorate of Health Services (DHS) of NCT Delhi is mulling the idea of bringing in a system for bettering the occupancy rate of the free beds designated for the poor.
The picture, at present at various hospitals, with the latest addition being the Action Cancer Hospital, where a total of 591 beds have been reserved for the poor, continues to be dismal and much below the mark, with the occupancy rate remaining around 15 per cent.
Dr RN Das, who has recently taken over the charge of the nursing home cell at DHS, said, "Patients still can be seen queuing up at the government hospitals and free beds are running vacant. This indicates that something is still a miss and the area is being worked out, but concrete thing is yet to crystallise."
Under the new system, which would be rolled on from tomorrow, the hospitals have to provide daily update on not only status of free beds, but also the details of the patients, along with the mobile number. Currently, the hospitals concerned give the information on the availability of beds and the DHS updates the website daily around 5 pm based on the facts received via mails.
"We are creating a webpage, which would be functional from tomorrow and the hospitals would be mandated to give information on total number of beds, designated free beds, break-up of those meant and available for the critical and non-critical category patients. The webpage would run simultaneously with the old one until February 14 on trial and this would allow us to iron out problems if any," said Dr Das while talking to The Tribune.
Apart from this, the Delhi government-constituted monitoring committee would conduct random inspection either through phone or on-site visit to check the veracity of the details furnished by the hospitals. The five-member committeee, presently comprising chairperson Dr JN Mohanty and Dr Ashok Rana from DHS, lawyer Ashok Agarwal, who filed a PIL against private hospitals on behalf of NGO Social Jurist, Dr TK Cherian from St Stephens Hospital and a representative of the hospital to be inspected, would go to hospitals, talk to the admitted patients and try to find out the facts about the treatment.
While from February 14 onwards, the new system would be functional, majority of the private hospitals have collected their username and password and others would have it by tomorrow. Henceforth, the hospitals would update the details on their own on the website, which would be managed and monitored by the DHS.
"The occupancy is gradually improving, though it is not satisfactory. We are hoping to see it around, at least, 60 per cent within the next three months. We held a special meeting on February 1 to discuss the matter and yet to finalise the details," added Dr Das. |
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