LAHORE: The Punjab government has introduced the ‘medical teaching institutions (MTI)’ law to bridge the “administrative gap” that was draining massive public resources while offering poor healthcare services to patients as well as teaching facilities in medical teaching institutions across the province.

Speaking at a news conference here on Saturday, Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid dispelled the perception that the government had a plan to privatise its any health facility.

Referring to the Punjab health department’s Rs230 billion non-development and Rs45bn development budget, the minister said the government was spending Rs4.5 million budget on each hospital bed in the teaching institutions and Rs3.5m on each bed in primary and secondary healthcare facilities — but no patient was ever satisfied. The health department has 49,000 beds at its healthcare facilities.

Yasmin Rashid says MTI law introduced to offer autonomy to institutes

Dr Rashid said the MTI Ordinance would offer medical teaching institutions complete financial and administrative autonomy ensuring audit of every employee’s performance.

Under the MTI law, she said the government would nominate a board of governors (BoG) and a hospital committee that would ensure availability of all training facilities in teaching hospitals and the medical faculty training its students. She said the teaching hospitals would be given one-line budget so that the BoG could ensure up-to-date facilities.

She said the BoG’s performance would be audited by a third party thrice a year and a final financial audit by the accountant general and added that each institution’s performance audit report would be presented in the Punjab Assembly.

She said the chief minister would have the powers to disband a BoG, if it would not be performing at its optimum level.

Answering a question about the status of civil service under the MTI law, Dr Rashid said the employees would remain the government servants but a medical institution would monitor whether employees were performing well or not.

Dr Rashid said 50 per cent posts in healthcare facilities were lying vacant when the PTI government was formed and added that 14,000 doctors had so far been inducted on merit. The government also inducted 600 medical teachers, 1,100 consultants, 4,000 nurses, 5,000 paramedical staff and as many pharmacists.

Referring to the poor ratio of “four doctors — one nurse” against international standards of “one doctor — 10 nurses”, the health minister said the government was in the process of setting up 12 new nursing colleges to fill the gap.

She said the government selected 122 private hospitals on its panel that immediately offered 9,000 beds in the province and added 100 more private hospitals would also be included in the government panel list.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan and Punjab Information Minister Mian Aslam Iqbal also spoke on the occasion.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2019