KP CM asked to arrange funds for public sector hospitals

PESHAWAR: It’s a good development to see the caretaker chief minister Justice (retired) Syed Arshad Hussain Shah in action but the more important is to arrange funds for the public sector hospitals, particularly the tertiary care hospitals in Peshawar, to resume free services.

The chief minister on Tuesday paid a so-called surprise visit to Khyber a Pakhtunkhwa’s oldest and largest health facility, the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH). It was not a surprise visit as the chief minister was accompanied by the chief secretary, officials of the district administration and the Hospital Director of LRH, Brig (retired) Abrar Khan received the chief minister and other officials upon arrival in the LRH.

The chief minister may or may not be aware of the financial difficulties the medical teaching institutions (MTIs) run by their respective Boarde of Governors, under the MTI Act.Their funds have been delayed and they were no longer able to pay salaries to their employees in time.

The Hayatabad Medical Complex in Peshawar paid two months salary, September and October, last week.Other MTIs also paid October salary to their staff last week.They spent from their own funds on sehat card patients and since the provincial government is not able to clear dues of the insurance company, State Life Insurance Corporation, therefore, the insurance company stopped paying to the hospitals.

The company has to pay Rs2 billion to the Peshawar Institute of Cardiology, Hayatabad Medical Complex, LRH, Mardan Medical Complex and other hospitals. If paid, it will enable these hospitals to improve their services and patient care.

Also, the chief minister might be aware of another major problem. The PIC, HMC and LRH had started primary percutaneous coronary intervention or Primary PCI and saved many previous human lives.

This is also an emergency treatment as patients taken to hospitals during heart attack or angina are shifted to the Cath Lab, where the interventional cardiologists through a procedure treat the narrowed coronary arteries. It was a very good development but it was possible only in sehat card.

Now when the sehat card facility has been stopped, all the three public sector hospitals have suspended primary PCI as patients can’t afford to pay for it. Being the largest hospital with heavy budget, sehat card patients were forced to bring some of the items, used in angiography, from the market but even then patients would come to seek free stents, if needed.

The chief minister should either restore the sehat card facility and if that’s not possible, he should play a role and bring KP’s funds, stated to he around Rs280 billion, from the federal government, and allocate funds to LRH, HMC and PCI to restart primary PCI.

The same facility can also be started in KTH, where millions of funds have been spent on procurement of costly Cath Lab machine but never used it. The Cath Lab in KTH couldn’t not be utilised for the patients as the hospital was lacking funds to purchase stents and other medical supplies and second, the hospital has only one interventional cardiologist.

It will be better to divide the cardiology department in KTH into two sections- intervention cardiology and general cardiology or conventional cardiology.If the Cath Lab in KTH is made functional, it can help the hospital generate enough revenue.

Also, the chef minister might be aware of necessary and unnecessary referrals from other districts to the three hospitals in Peshawar. Some of the hospitals unnecessarily sent patients to Peshawar, even though the facilities patients sent for, are sometimes available in the Tehsil and District Headquarters Hospitals. There is no check on peripheries, though this is responsibility of DG Health and Services.

Every day and night, patients are being referred to the hospitals in Peshawar and the three hospitals in the provincial capital ? then referred them other hospitals.The latest example is a 8-year patient who suffered head injury when hit by a motorcycle while returning home from a madrassa in Ghundo village of Katlang Tehsil.

His uncle Muzzafar Shah told The News they first took him to the Category D Hospital in Katlang, they referred them to the Mardan Medical Complex, the doctors in MMC sent them to LRH and the LRH staff refused to admit him due to lack of bed.

They sent them to KTH and the doctors in KTH referred them to HMC. The doctors in HMC told them they don’t have beds so better to shift the patient to a private hospital. They took the patient to the Northwest General Hospital in Hayatabad where the patient was admitted to an ICU. Since it was very costly, the doctors in the next morning advised the attendants to shift the patient to their project 2 section where they would not be required to make payment. This saved the life of the patient.