Form state council to curb loot by pvt hospitals: MLA

Geetanjali Gayatri

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 8

Seeking constitution of a state council and other state and district bodies as per the provisions of the Haryana Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2014, Palwal MLA Karan Dalal said today that non-formulation of rules had resulted in private clinics charging exorbitant rates from patients in the dengue outbreak.

To curb the “loot” of private establishments in charging patients heavily for various tests as has been witnessed in the recent dengue outbreak, Dalal, in his letter to Governor Kaptan Singh Solanki, urged him to come to the rescue of the poor.

“Even after about one and a half year of the notification of the Act, neither state council and other bodies have been constituted, nor have the rules been framed. This shows the insensitive and callous attitude of the BJP government which seems non-serious about the welfare of people,” the Congress MLA said.

Terming the ongoing dengue outbreak as “worst”, Dalal maintained that private clinics were charging the poor heftily by taking advantage of the situation and there is absolutely no authority to check it.

“I believe the government is not constituting deliberately these bodies to help private establishments. Government doctors are unofficially referring the patients for dengue test to private establishments for illegal considerations even though it is available at much less price at government hospitals. Not only dengue, but for other tests also, people are forced to go to private establishments on one pretext or the other,” he said.

Under this Act, the government is supposed to constitute a state council, the State Authority for Clinical Establishments and the District Authority in each district.

The Haryana Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2014, was notified on March 28, 2014, to provide for registration and regulation of clinical establishments of different recognised systems of medicines in Haryana and matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. The Act seeks to ensure time bound programme for the development of standards and their subsequent enforcement, mandatory to provide emergency care, prominent display of details of charges and the facilities available at visible places at such clinical establishments.

The Act also ensures that the issues such as ethics, infrastructure, and quality management, maintenance of record, price control are tackled.