Notwithstanding government’s assurance to hospitals that dues under the CGHS will be cleared in a week, the health-care service providers on Saturday decided to go ahead with the discontinuation of the cashless services.
The hospitals are demanding immediate clearance of pending outstanding of over Rs. 200 crore towards them under the Central Government Health Scheme.
The government had on Friday said the pending amount is likely to be cleared “within a week” and had also announced a revision of payments as demanded by private hospitals association.
“Large and long pending payments which far exceeded the agreed upon time frame... It takes weeks and months for hospitals to receive the money,” the Association of Healthcare Providers (India) said in a statement on Saturday.
Under the circumstances, it has become un-tenable for hospitals to continue giving cashless services as they are not getting paid for the services for months.
“CGHS own dashboard showed Rs. 202 crore as outstanding to hospitals as on January 31, 2014,” it said.
Very little amount out of this has actually been received till now, whereas more bills have been raised and submitted by the hospitals, the statement said.
Hospitals are being threatened that they should continue with cashless services. “CGHS is very conveniently avoiding the fact that Memorandum of Understanding (signed between them) clearly provides with obligation on part of CGHS to pay the dues within 10 days,” the association said.
Hospitals very humbly want to know that with what legal and moral right, CGHS can ask hospitals about violating the terms and conditions, when CGHS itself has violated so openly the terms and conditions of the MoU. How can CGHS demand hospitals to continue cashless services when some of the hospitals in NCR have pending amount? they asked.
Hospitals, through their association, have been holding meetings with CGHS since March 2013. “There has not been any improvement in the working of CGHS. Only when hospitals have been pushed to wall as explained above, they have been forced to withdraw cashless services,” the statement said.
The Union health ministry is working on resolving the crisis.
