MTIs in KP complain about lack of funds for patients’ care

PESHAWAR: The authorities of the three Medical Teaching Institutions (MTIs) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa complained about the lack of funds, fearing they may not be able to entertain the patients accordingly if funds were not provided to them immediately.

There are three MTIs in the provincial capital including Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC). They are governed by their separate Board of Governors (BoGs).

The basic concept of much-publicised health reforms of the previous Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government and introducing the MTIs system in 2015 was to grant financial and administrative autonomy to the tertiary care hospitals by enabling them to generate their own resources and spend as per their requirements.

However, none of these MTIs had been able to achieve financial sustainability in the past eight years.They got full independence from the government but the provincial bureaucracy was quite critical of these MTIs, saying they were fully independent to spend funds but there had been no independent audit of these institutions.

“They always behaved if they were neither answerable nor accountable to the government. But they forget that they are funded by the government,” said a senior official of the Health Department.

The hospital authorities started complaining about fund shortage a few days later after the caretaker government was installed in the province.

Since the caretaker government is dominated by Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, an arch political rival of the PTI, it is widely portrayed as if the government was intentionally trying to create problems for the MTIs and the boards, nominated by the previous government.

However, the authorities of the three hospitals in Peshawar said they had nothing to do with any political party and their agenda, as they were supposed to serve the patients no matter which party ruled the province.

“LRH receives the highest number of patients from all over the province. The funds shortage has badly affected our ability to manage the flow of patients. I am afraid it could deteriorate further if funds are not made available to the hospital within a few days,” Mohammad Asim, a media manager of the hospital told The News.

The same is the case of two other major hospitals in Peshawar, KTH and HMC.Asim said the hospital had a Rs7 billion annual budget and they never faced any problem in the past in terms of funding. LRH used to get Rs1.5 billion quarterly from the government, but after the new government took over, it reduced its funding.

“The government is supposed to pay us Rs4 billion, including Rs2.5 billion operational budget which is very important as it is directly related to the patient care to look after around 3000 emergency patients as they are given each and every service free of cost. These services include passing stents to cardiac patients, neurosurgery procedures and similarly gynaecology treatments,” the LRH spokesman explained.

Besides emergency care, he said they had to offer free services to around 1300-1500 indoor patients that cost them heavy expenses and if the government stopped their payments, it would have adverse effects on the patients.

LRH has around 4,000 employees, including 1000 faculty members.It is complained that despite increase in budget and faculty and other staff members, LRH has reduced the number of patients from 5,000 to 2,500 in the outpatient departments (OPDs). Before being declared an MTI, LRH used to cater to 5,000 patients in OPDs. The hospital spokesman argued the LRH introduced filtration clinics in order to refer patients to relevant consultants and patients suffering from common illnesses are treated in the same place.

“Prof Dr Nausherwan Burki’s vision is that every patient should be given at least 30 minutes in the OPD,” he said.

He said he had never stated that the hospital had defaulted but would not hide facts that they would not be able continue with their present operations if funds were not provided to them.

LRH had the largest number of beds for mass trauma in its accident and emergency department and it has been LRH that handled all the major traumas of the province including bomb explosions, suicide attacks, drone strikes and road tariff accidents.

The latest suicide attack was in the Peshawar Police Lines mosque, and according to Mohammad Asim, they had received 170 injured of the devastating attack and all of them professionally handed.

He said they had spent Rs2.5 million from their own budget on the first day of the incident and some of the injured remained admitted for several days and were given free medical care.

It is also stated that some of the hospitals particularly LRH had heavily spent funds on procurement of equipment, some of them were unnecessary and hardly used. Sajjad Khan, a spokesman for KTH, also confirmed that the government was required to pay them Rs2 billion funds, which had been stopped for some time, affecting their routine operations.

“Obviously it would have adverse effects on our operations, though we may not pay salaries to our employees but can’t afford to stop services to patients, “ he said.

HMC is another major hospital and is stated to be one of best among the 10 MTIs for the quality of patient care and standards it had developed.The government needs to pay its more than Rs1 billion payment.

“Certainly it will have a negative impact if funds were not made available in time. We have to cut down on equipment purchase and development work to ensure payment of salaries and utilities. Moreover because of the shortage of funds and issues with LCs, availability of certain essential drugs and surgical disposables is also adversely affected,” an official of the hospital said.

When reached, Secretary Health Mahmood Aslam told The News they had written to the finance department and informed them about the financial problems of the hospitals.“The health department has nothing to do with the financial matters of the hospitals. We have informed the finance department and requested them to release funds for the hospitals,” Mahmood Aslam said.