23/08/2022
With a majority of the public sector hospitals having suspended cardiac procedures under the government’s Sehat Card Plus programme, the government is considering suspending all other services of those hospitals if they didn’t resume cardiac surgeries immediately.
It has caused multiple problems to the increasing number of patients suffering from various cardiac complications in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as there are already limited services offering cardiac surgeries in the province.
Pakistan Association of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons (PAC&TS), on August 2 wrote to the government to review the current procedural rates for cardiovascular and thoracic surgeries.
They had argued that keeping in view of the current inflation, it was not possible for them to treat any patient in the present package of Sehat Card Plus.
“Almost all the private hospitals having cardiac surgery departments have suspended cardiac procedures on Sehat Card Plus scheme and forcing patients to pay them in cash. The majority of the patients are poor and can’t afford the heavy cost of such procedures in the public and private hospitals,” an official of the Health Department told The News.
To discourage patients needing cardiac surgeries under Sehat Card Plus, the doctors in private hospitals are giving long dates to force them into cash payment, he said.
Pleading anonymity, the official said private hospitals are earning 85 per cent from the SCP (Sehat Card Plus) scheme, a flagship scheme of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Isnaf (PTI) government in KP. The state-run hospitals are far behind in this race, owing to a host of issues.
Except for the Peshawar Institute of Cardiology (PIC) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC), where the Cardiac Surgery Department has been set up under a public-private partnership, there is no other public sector hospital that offers cardiac procedures in the province.
In the Cardiac Surgery Department of the HMC, however, Sehat Card patients are not entertained.
They had to wait for years if they wanted surgeries to be done on the SCP.
The Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), where the first Cardiac Surgery Department of the province was established, had been in crisis after the hospital was taken over by Dr Nausherwan Burki.
Dr Burki had initially suspended cardiac procedures in the Cardiac Surgery Department of LRH, and the reason he had cited was the high mortality rate. Almost all the cardiac surgeons resigned from jobs and joined private sector hospitals, where they are now successfully doing surgeries and cardiac patients have to wait for months for their turn to come.
Four new cardiac surgeons were recently hired by the LRH administration to resume cardiac surgeries but since they are quite young and there is no senior surgeon to supervise them, the cardiologists are reluctant to send them patients.
In the MTI Act 2015, every young specialist doctor is appointed in the MTI hospital as an assistant professor and they have to run the show all alone.
“These fresh FCPS doctors used to be appointed as senior registrars, and after serving under the command of professors, associate professors and assistant professors, they would get promoted to the position of assistant professor. In short, most of the departments including the highly sensitive department of cardiac surgery are run by senior registrars,” a senior medical consultant told The News in the LRH.
He said there were very serious patients and they needed urgent cardiac surgery, but the hospital had stopped procedures on Sehar Card and the patients couldn’t afford it. The consultant who wished not to be named said most of the private sector hospitals had started sensitive procedures and hired inexperienced people just to make money from Sehat Card patients.
One such cardiac patient from the Shangla district was advised immediate surgery. He was, however, refused surgery under the SCP in all the hospitals in Peshawar.
The patient possessed a piece of land in his native area and decided to sell it to arrange money for his surgery. He went from pillar to post to find a buyer for his land but failed.
When reached, chief executive of the Sehat Card Plus programme Dr Riaz Tanoli told The News that they had taken serious note of the issue and would suspend all other services under the SCP scheme to the hospitals refusing cardiac surgeries under the same programme.
“We called an emergency meeting on Monday to sort out this important issue. Most of the private hospitals are running on Sehat Card and if they are not willing to provide cardiac surgery services, we will suspend all other services to them,” Dr Tanoli said. He, however, said that they would listen to the grievances of cardiac surgeons and might revise procedure rates if needed.
Dr Riaz Tanoli also decided to resolve the issue of the young patient from Shangla, saying he would soon arrange a surgeon for him in Peshawar to save his life.
