PESHAWAR: Teaching hospitals in the provincial capital are providing a sizeable part of medicines purchased for poor patients to the government officers and lawmakers admitted there as private patients.
According to the relevant officials, the government employees working in BPS-17 and above as well as MPAs and MNAs and their relatives get free drugs, diagnostic services and private rooms at teaching hospitals.
Ironically, the government gives no funds to these healthcare centres for such privileged patients and thus, denying free services, especially medicines, to the poor people under treatment at general wards.
The officials told Dawn that on average, 15 to 20 patients, including gazetted officers and lawmakers or their relatives were admitted to the private rooms but they didn’t pay Rs2000 room charges each, which the administration charged from un-entitled patients.
They said the government allocated ‘one-line’ budget to the teaching hospitals and around 30 per cent of it was used to buy medicines for entitled patients.
The officials said the hospitals were struggling to provide medicines to the critically-ill and deserving patients admitted to general wards and had to purchase drugs from the market for those admitted to private rooms.
They said the hospitals bought medicines for poor patients when they’re not available in store but the amount spent to procure drugs for entitled people admitted to private rooms often led to the exhaustion of funds meant for the hospitalised people. The officials said for every entitled patient, the hospitals purchased medicines from the market.
They said many of such ‘privileged’ patients claimed reimbursements from their respective departments but the hospitals where they availed themselves of free services didn’t get a single penny on that count.
The officials also pointed out the teaching hospitals had special rooms for VIPs and VVIPs, which violated the ruling PTI’s claims of being strongly opposed to the ‘VIP culture’.
A teaching hospital’s senior staff member said after the enforcement of the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act 2015, the teaching hospitals’ board of governors had planned to ensure that the funds allocated for medicines are spent exclusively on the treatment of poor patients admitted to general wards.
He said the BoGs wanted the entitled patients to pay for their treatment and diagnosis at those hospitals before claiming the amount from their respective departments.
“If a gazetted officer is entitled to get free treatment from hospitals, then the hospitals should be appositely paid for it,” he said.
The hospital staff member said teaching hospitals covered by the MTI had planned to take up the matter with the provincial government for either allocation of special funds by it for entitled patients or permission to charge such patients for their examination, treatment and room costs.
A medical consultant told Dawn that the issue should be jointly discussed by BoGs of the hospitals.
“We should generate resources and allocate funds to wards, where deserving patients are admitted,” he said.
The consultant said the hospitals had been using many of their private rooms as offices and around 20 per cent of the rest remained under the use of entitled patients.
“The patients admitted to private rooms pay for services. They are charged for investigations, operations, rounds of doctors and work by nurses and paramedics,” he said.
He said patients would benefit if the government allocated separate budget for private room patients claiming entitlement.
