PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has started assessing service delivery by the private hospitals empanelled for the health insurance programme Sehat Card Plus, saying the hospitals found to be providing residents with poor service will be de-listed.

Officials told Dawn that the government, as part of its plan to empanel more public sector hospitals for the SCP, had started evaluating the performance of the empanelled private hospitals regarding the provision of free care to patients.

They said the exercise started last Monday and would be completed by next Friday.

The officials said many private hospitals were likely to lose empanelment as the government had already tightened criteria and more public sector health facilities would be selected for the insurance programme.

Officials say hospitals with poor service to be delisted

They said currently, 119 hospitals offered cashless treatment under the SCP.

The officials said most of those hospitals were located in cities, mostly in the provincial capital.

They said presently, 60 public and 58 private hospitals were on the panel of the health department to cater for patients under the insurance programme.

The officials said as the SCP resumed on March 12 after remaining suspended for months during the caretaker government over a lack of funding, the current government wanted to select more public hospitals in districts to ease the burden on Peshawar-based facilities and enable the people to get services in their native districts.

They said they had planned to give a presentation to Chief Minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur regarding the SCP services in all districts and ensure that more and more hospitals are empanelled there to benefit locals.

The officials said they would inform the chief minister about the beds required in districts.

They said as the government was regularly funding the programme, they wanted to see residents benefit from it.

The officials said since last March, the new government had released Rs5 billion to the State Life Insurance Corporation, which was executing the SCP, in order to keep the health services afloat.

They said some districts didn’t have “good” hospitals, so residents went to other districts, especially Peshawar, to avail themselves of better services.

The officials said more than Rs77 billion had so far been spent on over three million SCP patients, with 60 per cent of the amount going to private hospitals and the rest to government ones.

They added that free care under the programme was received mostly by women (54 per cent of the total beneficiaries).

The officials said 635 hospitals catered for patients under the SCP in other provinces, and they included 384 private and 251 government ones.

“We have 33.2 million people who can receive care at the empanelled hospitals throughout the country,” an official told Dawn.

He said the entire population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was entitled to SCP services, and therefore, they required more hospitals to facilitate them.

The official said the selection and removal of hospitals from the SCP panel was a routine process that had been under way since the launch of the programme.

“There is a laid-down criteria, and all hospitals fulfilling it will be empanelled for the SCP,” he said.

The officials, however, said the government’s focus was on the strengthening of public sector hospitals so that they could get the lion’s share of the income generated by the SCP.

They added that they had been holding seminars as well as discussions with the representatives of public sector hospitals to scale up their capacity on how to attract more and more patients for care under the health insurance programme.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2024