Hospitals asked to facilitate health card holders

State Life Insurance issues letter to more than 1,000 hospitals to carry on with free treatment facility

RAWALPINDI:

The State Life Insurance has issued a letter to more than 1,000 hospitals on the panel to continue treatment of patients under the Sehat Insaf Card.

The development comes after The Express Tribune reported that all public and private sector hospitals in the Rawalpindi division have surreptitiously refused to treat patients entitled to Sehat Insaf Card.

Earlier sources told The Express Tribune that the hospitals' management was concerned about the reimbursement of expenses to be incurred under the health card after the PTI government was booted out of power.

Earlier, hundreds of patients, who visited more than 25 public and private hospitals in Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Attock and Chakwal, had been denied under the Sehat card, sources said.

The State Life Insurance, being the guarantor of the health programme wrote a letter to more than 1,000-panel hospitals across the country on April 10, reiterating that the health card scheme would continue and expenses would be reimbursed.

According to the State Life Insurance, more than 2.5 million patients have so far availed of the facility since the launch of the initiative and released more than Rs45 billion to panel hospitals as reimbursement.

According to the State Life Insurance letter, some panel hospitals had expressed reservations about providing the free service but all panel hospitals have been guaranteed that the health facility initiative would continue at full speed.

“All of Pakistan's panel hospitals would comply with the agreement, and all panel hospitals will give all required medical treatment to all patients covered by the health card,” said the State Life Insurance letter.

On the other hand, Rawalpindi health department officials have directed all the government hospitals of the division to provide treatment to patients under the health card and letters have been sent to the management of hospitals to implement the existing regime.

Hospitals have been asked to provide free treatment to the patients under the health facility and the charges incurred will be covered under the health card.

An official working in a government hospital had earlier said on condition of anonymity that since April 1, the hospitals have stopped accepting further admissions and operations on the Sehat Insaf Card without a plausible explanation and announcement, causing a great deal of distress to the patients and their families.

“The management of the hospitals are concerned as to how the money will be collected from the new government if the PTI government is thrown out of power,” the health official had said adding that patients already admitted to hospitals prior to April 1 were being treated while those who come after April 1 were given new dates every day.

Shamshad Hussain, a patient who had visited the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology from Muzaffarabad, said that last month doctors decided to perform bypass surgery on him and assured him that all the expenses to be incurred on the operation would be reimbursed through Sehat Insaf Card.

“Now, doctors are refusing to conduct the operation despite their assurance. They have asked me to go to a private hospital. When I visited a private hospital with the Sehat Card, the hospital refused to accept the card and demanded cash,” he had said.

Shamshad said he hailed from a poor family and if he had money, he would never have used the Sehat Insaf Card. “The government should restore this facility so that the poor can get free treatment,” he had said.

When Rawalpindi District Health Authority officials were contacted about the refusal of Sehat cards for providing free medical treatment, they had said that the system of Sehat Insaf Card was very complicated and complaints regarding its veracity can be confirmed by health authorities in Lahore or from health card counters in hospitals.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2022.