Swasthya Sathi patients: Health body seeks 3 years data from private hospitals

Kolkata: The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission (WBCERC) has sought past 3 years data from the private hospitals to ascertain how many Swasthya Sathi patients were treated by the private hospitals.

Those private hospitals who have provided treatment to the maximum number of patients will be awarded by

the WBCERC.

The WBCERC’s chairperson Justice (retired) Ashim Banerjee along with other officials held a meeting with the top officials of private hospitals from the city having more than 150 beds when the commission directed the private hospitals to reserve 10 per cent seats for state health scheme patients.

The WBCERC has sought for the last 3 years data from the hospitals as to how many Swasthya Sathi or West Bengal health scheme patients they have served. The hospitals will have to furnish data as to what was the bed capacity of the hospitals and how many Swasthya Sathi and state health scheme patients they have treated.

As many as 47 private hospitals took part in Monday’s meeting. The next meeting will be held before Durga puja this year. The commission also sought the information about how many non-Swasthya Sathi patients were treated by these hospitals in the past 3 years. During the meeting the WBCERC once again urged the private hospitals to lower some costs including medicines, equipment and doctors fees for the benefits of patients.

The WBCERC chairperson Banerjee admitted that there were incidents where some private hospitals refused to admit Swasthya Sathi patients in pretext of non-availability of beds and some top doctors refused to treat Swasthya Sathi patients which cannot be tolerated, the commission observes.