Hindustan Times 09.12.2010
Civic hospitals to get 140 beds in 9 private health facilities
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will tag nine private hospitals as auxiliary health units to major civic hospitals. The idea is to keep a check on whether these hospitals, developed by the BMC under public private partnership (PPP), are adhering to the terms of their agreement to reserve some beds for the poor.The BMC, according to the agreement signed with these nine hospitals, was to get 140 beds under their mandatory quota. These hospitals have been built on BMC land.
These beds were to be used for referral patients from BMC hospitals or be given to patients below the poverty line.
Additional municipal commissioner, Manisha Mhaiskar, said the BMC was getting the benefits of these 140 beds but that was at a local level.
The BMC will now integrate these beds in its health system.
Mhaiskar said the move will bring relief during the monsoons, when civic hospitals are brimming and patients are forced to sleep on the floor. “We are going to put up public advertisements saying these 140 beds are BMC’s share and an eligible person can demand a bed in any of these nine hospitals,” Mhaiskar said.
The additional bed facility will be introduced from January.
The list of nine hospitals, which provide benefits under the PPP agreement, includes maternity centres and cardiac hospitals.
A co-branding board will be put up at the hospitals’ gates specifying the number of beds set aside for poor patients under the BMC’s quota.
