Nagpur: Beneficiaries of the Employees State Insurance Scheme (ESIS) are facing a lot of trouble in getting medicines at the ESIS hospital in city. All major drugs are out of stock at the ESIS hospital as Haffkine Bio-Pharmaceutical Corporation Limited (HBPCL), the only procurement agency nominated by the state government for medicines for all establishments, has not supplied medicines on time.
Vidarbha has about three lakh ESIS beneficiaries, whereas the family beneficiaries are over 11 lakh persons. Earlier, medicines were procured by ESIS directly and the problem of medicine supply was not so acute. After the GR asking ESIS to procure medicines through Haffkine, the local administration sent the demand list well in time in February 2018.
But there has been no response at all from HBPCL so far, which is creating problems for patients. Most ESIS beneficiaries don’t have money to first pay for the medicine and then get the money reimbursed from ESIS. This has led to a lot of discontentment among patients.
HBPCL official RM Kumbhar denied there has been any delay in the procurement process. He told TOI that the process of purchases was on. “Tendering process has its own procedure and takes its own time. The process is on, and there is no delay from our side,” he said.
However, Dr Meena Deshmukh, medical superintendent of ESIS in city, says that earlier she would get about 100 reimbursement cases but this number has now risen to 300-350 patients. “Reimbursement process is also expensive for the government. ESIS gives medicines to patients at a highly subsidized rate, but when the patient buys the same medicines from open market, they cost many more times. Hence, it is always better for ESIS to give patients medicines instead of telling them to buy from outside,” said Dr Deshmukh.
ESIS commissioner Dr Rishikesh Yashod, meanwhile, told TOI that as per government provisions ESIS is buying 10% of the medicines in its total budget by itself, and soon supply to all hospitals and dispensaries will be resumed. “I don’t think Haffkine will be able to supply medicines for another few months, so we have started buying medicines from our money,” said Dr Yashod.
Talking about the incident on Tuesday, when the RMO of ESIS had to lock an aggressive patient in a room, Dr Yashod said that the patient was to undergo an elective procedure of hip replacement and there was no hurry for the medicines. “Yet, I have ordered the local staff to buy medicines from local purchase quota,” he said.