Hospital allegedly involved in ‘frauds’; patients left to suffer
Irfan Tramboo
Srinagar, Jan 15: While the privately-run Guru Multi-Speciality Hospital in north Kashmir’s Sopore has stopped to entertain the patients intending to avail services covered under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY), the authorities today said that the empanelment of the hospital has been suspended after several “violations” and “frauds” were noted by the State Health Agency (SHA).
The officials at SHA told Excelsior that the empanelment of the Hospital has been suspended after it came to the fore that a number of violations of the guidelines have been committed during the processing of the cases under AB-PMJAY, prompting the authorities to impose a penalty which has been made a prerequisite for allowing the hospital to operate again and the same conveyed to the hospital management.
While they did not specify the alleged violations and frauds, they, however, underlined that the hospital will have to pay Rs 72 lakh as a penalty to get back to normal functioning as an empanelled hospital.
“The suspended empanelment will be restored after they pay the penalty amount which also means that it (hospital) will not be functioning now as it previously used to under the AB-PMJAY,” the officials noted.
The hospital management, on the other hand, has told the patients that the concerned authorities have suspended the portal for them, which has prompted them to stop offering them the services.
Those dealing with the patients, on the condition of anonymity, said that they are no longer able to register new patients due to the suspension of the empanelment. “We can complete the ongoing cycles of the dialysis, but we are not able to register new patients; the hospital has received a letter from authorities, but that is with the management; we do not know about it,” they said.
Excelsior tried to reach out to the management of the hospital to know their side of the story, but no one was ready to talk on record. However, they agreed to attribute to them saying that the SHA “did not give them the time” to respond, and “took the harsh step.”
The aggrieved patients, especially those who used to get their dialysis done at the hospital, are aghast and were left with no option but to protest today. During the protest, they said that they have been left with nowhere to go while urging the Government to take measures to ease their hardships.
“We have been told that the Golden Cards have been suspended by the authorities and now we have been left on our own. My husband has been dealing with kidney disease for the last 9 years, and for the last 3 years, we used to get the dialysis done here, free of cost; we would have gone to some other hospital, but the patient is not in a condition to travel,” said Fatima, one of the attendants.
Another patient attendant, Rukaya, said that they do not know the reason behind the hospital not accepting the Golden Cards. “We should have been told beforehand. Where do we go now, all the beds are occupied elsewhere? In private, it takes Rs 3000, how are we going to afford it,” she added.
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