It has been decided to provide all types of treatment and tests etc. free of cost in all the hospitals of the health department in the state, as per the report by Loksatta. High-ranking sources in the health department said that even the INR 10 that is charged for the case paper will not be taken. The proposal in this regard will soon come before the Cabinet for approval.
There are 517 hospitals in the state including district hospitals, general hospitals, women's hospitals, rural hospitals and sub-district hospitals and psychiatric hospitals of the health department. Apart from this there are 1877 primary health centers and 10,735 health sub-centres. There are a total of 46,311 beds under the health department's hospital service and more than three crore patients receive treatment in the outpatient department in a year, while there are about 27 lakh 82 thousand 586 inpatients. More than 400,000 surgeries are performed every year in various hospitals of the health department including minor and major surgeries.
In the health department, INR 10 for case paper, INR 30 to INR 300 for blood test, INR 75 for X-ray, INR 100 for sonography, INR 100 for stitches, INR 30 for physiotherapy, INR 10 for dressing and INR 2,000 for major surgeries including cancer patients are charged. The health department gets an annual income of around INR 70 crore from patients who are charged for treatment and case paper.
However, the cost of the administrative system and manpower used to collect this money was found to be INR 70 crores. Keeping in mind that this system can be used elsewhere in the health department, the health minister has proposed the position of making all treatment free in the meeting of Additional Chief Secretary Milind Mhaiskar, Commissioner Dhiraj Kumar and other senior officials and the proposal will soon be brought before the cabinet for approval, said high-ranking sources.
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