Twenty-seven per cent of the beds in private hospitals, which are meant for patients from the economically weaker sections (EWS) in Delhi are lying vacant. However, some private hospitals maintain that their EWS beds are getting full because they are having to go with the State government’s directions to admit dengue patients.
“These are the ridiculous suggestions and explanations given by private hospitals not to admit EWS patients,” maintained Ashok Agarwal, a member of the Delhi High Court-constituted committee for monitoring bed/other medical facilities availability to the EWS patients.
According to real-time data released by the Delhi Government on Friday, at the 51 identified Delhi hospitals — which are to provide these beds — 173 beds of the total 640 free beds are vacant.
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The top-violators include Batra Hospital in South Delhi (26), Max Balaji (28), Max Saket East Block (20), Fortis Escorts Heart Inst (10) and Bensups, South-West Delhi (13).
The Delhi High Court order had directed private hospitals that were granted land at concessional rates to provide a percentage of their total beds to patients under the EWS category.
In terms of the said judgment, 51 private hospitals in Delhi were identified and directed to provide free treatment to EWS-category patients. Later, out of these, four hospitals, Moolchand Hospital, St. Stephen’s Hospital, Sitaram Bhartiya Institute of Science and Research and Rockland Hospital, Qutub Institutional Area (Foundation for Applied Research in Cancer) preferred writ petitions in the Delhi High Court and got exemption from providing free treatment.
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Meanwhile, the Delhi Government had previously, in a bid to streamline the treatment of patients belonging to EWS directed its hospitals to refer EWS patients to private hospitals in order to utilise the beds reserved for the EWS category, as they largely remain vacant.