The proposal was approved by the City Improvement Committee (CIC) on Friday.

“Already hospitals are using one FSI and an additional 0.5 FSI granted
by the state and the PMC. Now, the state has announced to augment the
FSI by one. This means that hospitals are authorized to use 2.5 FSI. The
additional FSI is granted to hospitals for treating poor patients. But
majority of the hospitals only use the FSI, they don’t treat the poor.
Hence, the PMC has come up with the new proposal,” CIC chairman Chetan
Tupe told TOI after the meeting.

Hospitals which use 2.5 FSI
will have to pay 30% of their annual income to the PMC, while hospitals
using 2 and 0.5 FSI will have to pay 20% and 10% of their annual income
respectively. Basically, the permission for this extra FSI has been
given to hospitals so that they reserve 10% beds for Below Poverty Line
(BPL) patients (whose annual income is Rs 50,000 and below).

The
public benefit scheme was framed by the Bombay high court and its
implementation started in September 2006. Under the scheme, all
charitable hospitals have to earmark and reserve 10% beds for indigent
patients and 10% beds for economically weaker section; treatment for
indigent patients is to be free. Two per cent of the gross billing of
paying patients should be put aside to create Indigent Patient Fund (IPF) under the scheme.

The city has 49 private charitable hospitals. They get additional FSI,
concessions in water, power, customs, octroi duties and sales and income
taxes.

“After receiving repeated complains against hospitals,
the PMC has decided to ask them to pay a percentage of their income to
the PMC. The PMC will directly pay bills for poor from this amount. So
any poor patient can get him/her admitted to a charitable hospital and
approach the PMC, which will pay for the patient,” said Tupe.

Recently, an inspection of 11 private hospitals in the city by the joint
charity commissioner revealed they had been violating norms and not
extending the desired level of services to the needy. A few hospitals
were found to be hiding their status as charitable hospitals, while
medical administrators of some hospitals even asserted they were totally
unaware about the scheme. While one hospital followed almost all the
norms of the scheme, five others fell in line after the inspection. In
the action that followed against the rest, three hospitals were served
show-cause notices, while two had to face criminal cases for not making
sufficient arrangement for poor patients despite a charitable trust
status and availing of government concessions.