The Odisha government on Thursday directed all private hospitals to reserve 50% of their beds for admitting COVID-19 patients and charge reasonable cost.
The government has fixed treatment cost to be charged by private hospitals. The 50% reservation will also be applicable to intensive care unit and high density unit beds. The government came up with instruction in order to decongest government health facilities.
“It is observed that the private hospitals are treating non-COVID cases, but when they find such patients to be COVID-19 positive during the treatment, they immediately request the government machinery to shift the patient to a government COVID facility,” said Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, Additional Chief Secretary (Health), on Thursday.
The government also found that private hospitals were also not admitting COVID-19 patients with a plea that they did not have COVID-19 beds while some had designated very few beds for such patients. “This has resulted in increased load on government COVID facilities. Hence, private hospitals having facility for 30 beds or more and registered under Odisha Clinical Establishment (Control and Regulation) Act 1990 and the amendments there under are directed to ensure provision of minimum of 50% of available general beds and 50% of ICU and HDU beds for treatment of COVID patients,” the government directed.
Besides, hospitals have been directed to charge reasonable fees from patient and refrain from collecting exorbitant fees. The government warned of action if hospitals fail to follow the instruction.
For general beds, hospitals cannot charge more than ₹1200 for bed and ₹1,750 for consumable cost per day. For National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH) approved hospitals, bed charge would be ₹3,000. The ICU charge would be ₹2,000 for non-NABH and ₹5,000 for NABH hospitals.
Hospitals have been instructed to create a help desk, accessible physically and telephonically for counselling of relatives of patients and share information on status of health to attendant of the patient regularly.
