There have been several complaints of private hospitals claiming shortage of beds to turn away COVID-19 patients, but the statistics provided by the Telangana Health department tell a different story.
As per the media bulletin issued by the department on early Tuesday morning, there were 339 ICU beds and 466 oxygen beds available at 55 private hospitals.
In the media bulletin, number of beds for COVID patients in government and private hospitals were listed under three categories — regular beds, oxygen beds and ICU beds.
In government hospitals, there were a total of 8,446 beds. Of them, 2,242 were occupied and 6,204 were vacant. In case of 55 private hospitals, of the 811 ICU beds, only 339 were vacant, while 466 out of 1,676 oxygen beds were available.
Officials on July 14 said that a dashboard which displays live status of bed space will be made available. However, it was not made available, forcing people to approach multiple hospitals.
Meanwhile, insurance agents alleged that a few hospitals have been turning away COVID patients upon knowing that they have insurance policies.
A few COVID-affected families said that they were asked to pay cash in advance to get admitted. The hospitals managements asked them to claim reimbursement from insurance companies later, they alleged.
