The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY), the health-card scheme to provide treatment for the poor, is yet to clear dues of the last fiscal, amounting to Rs.70 lakh, to the District General Hospital. An amount of Rs.25 lakh to the Dhanwanthari Medical Store is also pending.
The General Hospital has spent the amount from the funds of the Hospital Development Society and further delay in getting the dues cleared would affect developmental activities in the hospital, sources said.
Of the total amount spent on RSBY scheme, the laboratory-test costs amount to nearly Rs.5 lakh, CT-scan costs come to Rs.1 lakh and MRI-scan (outsourced at Rs.3,000 a scan) costs is about Rs.50,000.
The scheme involves payment of Rs.100 per day for patients admitted to the ward and Rs.500 per day for those admitted to the intensive-care unit.
The scheme also provides for the transportation expenses of the discharged patients, besides the costs of medicines.
Hospitals reluctant
While the General Hospital has been implementing the scheme, the private hospitals in the district that are included in RSBY are wary about the scheme.
One of the hospital spokespersons said that the costs described in the scheme were too low for any hospital to implement it.
A patient with myocardial infraction admitted to a hospital would require at least five times the amount of Rs.500 given as ICU charges a single day.
Out of the 13 private hospitals in the district listed as empanelled on the website of RSBY, many of them are yet to implement the scheme.
At least two of the hospital spokespersons said that though they had completed the procedures on their part, the government was yet to complete the procedures to get the scheme started.
Spokesperson of another hospital said that while they had gone through the procedures, the management decided not to implement the scheme as the hospital would find it difficult to bear the expenses, especially when complaints were being raised about delay in payments.
However, a senior official of the United India Insurance Company Ltd., said that payments under the scheme were being made routinely. A total of 280 hospitals in the State had been included in the scheme and payments were being released through a third-party administrator for settling the RSBY bills, he said.
