Bhubaneswar: The Health and Family Welfare department Friday issued a new set of guidelines for the hosting and treatment of COVID patients in private hospitals. The new norms have instructed private hospitals not to charge exorbitantly for the treatment of patients and said hospitals cannot detain the bodies of COVID patients in case of non-payment of hospital bills.
“The discharge policy of the state shall be strictly followed. The patients or the bodies shall not be detained citing non-payment of fees. The institution shall develop a mechanism for collection of bills on a day to day basis so that a lump sum amount never remains pending,” it said. The government has asked hospitals to regularly inform the government regarding availability of facility, patient information, line of treatment, availability of beds, prices and others. The new norms have also ordered the hospitals to provide COVID positive reports to patients.
“The hospital shall allow one willing attendant of the patient to remain in the earmarked place on the hospital premises while ensuring prevention of cross infection. The hospital shall create a help desk accessible physically and telephonically for counselling for relatives of patients and share information on the status of health to attendants of the patient regularly,” the norms said.
“It is observed that private hospitals are treating non-COVID cases, but when they find such patients to be COVID positive they immediately request the government machinery to shift the case to a COVID facility, set up by the government. lt eventually caused a large surge of patients in COVID facilities,” the notification said.
The norms claimed that all asymptomatic and mild cases, when detected, could be sent to quarantine/home isolation or COVID care centres run by the private hospitals.
All private hospitals having more than 30 beds or more have now been asked to designate a minimum of10 per cent of their beds for COVID patients in an isolation ward. “Such reserved beds must include an appropriate number of ICU beds with ventilators dedicated to COVID patients,” the norms said.