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Harassed by touts, Ruby Hall Clinic writes to union health minister to discontinue IPF scheme
According to hospital officials, the hospital is being constantly harassed and intimidated by agents and touts who are pressuring the facility to consider ineligible patients under this scheme
A day after high drama at Ruby Hall Clinic (RHC) – wherein the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) youth wing protested and tried to get inside the hospital to meet the management – RHC has written to union health minister, Bharati Pawar, expressing a desire to discontinue the Indigent Patients’ Fund (IPF) scheme. According to hospital officials, the hospital is being constantly harassed and intimidated by agents and touts who are pressuring the facility to consider ineligible patients under this scheme.
The RHC officials on Thursday met Pawar and submitted a letter requesting her to look into the matter and intervene to amicably close the said scheme so that both poor patients and charitable hospitals would be benefitted.
“The RHC is a premier healthcare institute of Pune which annually donates around ₹25 crores in charity for indigent and weaker section patients under the IPF scheme. However, we would like to bring to your notice that we are constantly being harassed and intimidated by agents and touts who mislead patients and their relatives, and falsely promise to help them under the IPF scheme by falsifying papers and documents to state that they are economically poor patients. These patients are not economically deprived and do not fit under the criteria of IPF patients,” the letter read.
Behram Khodaiji, chief executive officer of RHC, stated in the letter that when the hospital personnel object to the fake claims, they are threatened and intimidated by these people. “As a result, a lot of non-deserving patients are taking advantage of this scheme and the poor and needy are being left out of its ambit. This hurts the larger interests of society and unnecessary and fake protests and demands are being made to the hospital authorities. This has become a widespread malice which is hurting all genuine charitable hospitals like ours,” Khodaiji said.
Around noon on Wednesday, the BJP youth wing protested at RHC and tried to get inside the hospital to meet the authorities. So much so that the police had to be called by the hospital authorities to control the mob. Even when the police arrived however, tension prevailed as the mob was not ready to leave and demanded action against the authorities and wanted to speak to the management.
Ali Daruwala, advisor of RHC, said, “We met the union health minister and handed over a letter to inform her about our desire to discontinue the IPF scheme, after the protest which occurred yesterday, allegedly by the BJP Yuva Morcha.”
The Scheme
Under the IPF scheme framed by the Bombay High Court (HC) and rolled out in September 2006, all charitable hospitals in the state have to allocate two per cent of their gross billing to help indigent or economically weak patients. This aid has to be in the form of free treatment to those with an annual income below ₹85,000, and at 50 per cent discounted billing for patients the income of whose families do not exceed ₹1.8 lakh. Charitable hospitals get FSI, concessions in water, power, customs, sales and income tax among others.
