Make pvt hospitals give cashless Covid treatment: Thakre

Nagpur: West Nagpur MLA Vikas Thakre on Wednesday met deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and requested directives from the state government to private hospitals to provide cashless hospitalization to Covid-19 patients having health insurance and also under government’s Mahatma Phule Jan Arogya Yojana.
TOI had on August 19 reported that private Dedicated Covid Hospitals (DCHs) and Dedicated Health Care Centres (DCHCs) were not giving cashless facility to insured patients. The hospitals are citing various reasons for not giving cashless hospitalization.
Thakre, in a memorandum submitted to Pawar, said, “Middle-class and service-class people do not have cash in hand to pay up to Rs3 lakh advance per head. They are totally depended on mediclaim insurance. Similarly, poor patients are not able to get beds in government-run Covid hospitals. They can get timely treatment in private hospitals if given cashless hospitalization under Mahatma Phule Jan Arogya Yojana.”
Thakre told TOI that Pawar forwarded his memorandum to health minister Rajesh Tope for necessary directives to private hospitals.
Thakre also raised the issue of people finding it difficult to get beds in the city. He said government had alerted Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) to equip infrastructure and manpower in April. But the civic body did nothing. Now, the cases and most shockingly deaths due to Covid-19 are on the rise.
Thakre added deaths could be prevented if everyone got timely treatment. Therefore, need was to develop a jumbo Covid Hospital in the city as soon as possible on the lines of one in Mumbai. “Smaller hospitals of 300 beds each in couple of parts of the city will also be very useful,” he said.
Thakre also informed Pawar about shortage of health care manpower in the city. “NMC developed five Covid hospitals of which four are yet to be commissioned. NMC is not having manpower to start them. Huge publicity was made by the NMC on 5,000-bed Covid Care Centre on Kalmeshwar road but not a single patient has been admitted there in four months. The government should also solve this problem,” he said.
Thakre also apprised the deputy CM about surge in cases and deaths in August and first week of September.
The district had registered 919 deaths in August and 413 in nine days of September for a total of 1,458. Positive cases were around 47,400 of which 14,000 came in September alone and 27,973 in August.