E-Paper
Govt allows 14 reserved pvt hospitals to use some beds for emergency care
New Delhi: Two days after designating 14 big private hospitals as dedicated Covid facilities, the Delhi government on Wednesday revised its order allowing the hospitals to use 10%-30% of their beds to provide emergency care as well as follow-up treatment to some of their patients
New Delhi: Two days after designating 14 big private hospitals as dedicated Covid facilities, the Delhi government on Wednesday revised its order allowing the hospitals to use 10%-30% of their beds to provide emergency care as well as follow-up treatment to some of their patients.
Only two hospitals, Max Smart Superspeciality hospital and Manipal hospital, remained completely Covid-19 centres after the revised order, which reduced the number of beds accrued from 4,337 beds to 3,553. Big hospitals such as Indraprastha Apollo and Sir Ganga Ram retained nearly 200 beds for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.
“The remainder beds or additional beds in these hospitals shall be used for treatment of non-Covid follow-up patients and patients requiring emergent medical or surgical treatment. Further, the concerned 14 hospitals would be allowed to temporarily increase their bed capacity up to 35% and the additional beds may also be utilised for the treatment of non-Covid patients,” the revised order signed by medical superintendent of Delhi’s nursing home cell Dr RN Das read.
The decision to free up beds was taken after a meeting between Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain and the representatives from all 14 hospitals.
“We met with the health minister today and explained our problems -- of the 14 hospitals, eight are located within 10km, seriously curtailing the chances of non-Covid patients in the region getting emergency care. These are also the biggest hospitals that provide specialised care such as transplant surgeries, complicated brain and spine surgeries and need to follow up these patients regularly. The minister understood our plight and we were told that some beds would be freed up in all the hospitals for non-Covid-19 patients,” said Dr PK Bharadwaj, secretary of Delhi Voluntary Hospital’s forum, an association of large private hospitals in the city. He said that during the meeting with the minister, he suggested that smaller nursing homes may be utilised instead to ramp up bed capacity, if needed.
Girdhar Gyani, director general of Association of Healthcare Providers (India), said, “This is our partial victory. These 14 hospitals can carry out the critical procedures. We will therefore not go to court for time being.” The association had prepared a writ petition after the government order. In September, the association had sued the Delhi government after 80% of the ICU beds in 33 big private hospitals had been reserved for Covid-19 treatment.
