The government will give accreditation to 32 private speciality hospitals for treatment of poor patients using grants from the Karunya Benevolent Fund, Finance Minister K. M. Mani announced here on Friday.
The treatment would be available for diseases affecting heart, kidney, liver and brain; cancer and palliative care from August 15. Assistance from the Fund is already available for treatment in government hospitals. Besides, two non-speciality government or private hospitals in each taluk would accredited for providing dialysis to kidney patients.
The Minister said that the accreditation is to be granted to hospitals that accepted package of rates put forward by the government for various treatment and diagnostic services. This meant that the hospitals would have to provide some concession of their own besides what the government was providing.
Mr. Mani said that the Fund, which had been raised from returns from the government’s Karunya Lottery, currently had a corpus of Rs. 57 crore. Rs. 16.56 crore had been sanctioned to poor patients from the Fund till now.
Each patient was eligible for grants of up to Rs. 2 lakh. The State level committee for the scheme, which met here on Thursday to clear the grants amounting to 8.61 crore to more than 1000 patients, had decided that any assistance received under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna need not be taken into account while sanctioning the grant. However, additional assistance received under ChisPlus Scheme should be deducted.
The Minister said that medicines for haemophilic patients would be made available to eligible persons under the scheme at prices lower than the market rates.
He ruled out possibility of irregularities from the part of the hospitals in implementing the scheme, as had happened in the case of the Bima Yojana. Bills would have to be approved by the patients also. State and district level committees would monitor implementation.
