BHUBANESWAR: The state government on Tuesday “de-hired” all privately managed Covid
hospitals in the state run in public private partnership mode except two in Bhubaneswar with retrospective effect from January 1 in view of declining number of patients.
Additional chief secretary-health (ACS-health)
Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra said two hospitals—SUM and Aditya Aswini—earmarked for Covid warriors will continue to remain operational till March 31. The rest 31 stand closed.
SUM Covid Hospital, which had 500
beds of Covid, is scaled down to have 50 general beds besides 75 beds ICU and 25 high dependency unit (HDU). Aditya Aswini Hospital (150 beds) will run with full capacity.
While there will be no new admission in any of the closed hospitals, patients already admitted will continue to get treatment till they are discharged. The closed hospitals are the ones managed by private parties where patients got treatment free of cost while the government reimbursed to the hospitals. The government had signed MoUs with the
private hospitals on costs to be reimbursed with the hospital management, which ranged from Rs 1200 to Rs 3000 per day for general beds and Rs 15,000 to Rs 18000 for ICU including costs of consumables, diagnostic tests and medicines.
“The technical committee on Covid-19 management had recommended shutting down of the privately managed facilities as these are no more needed. At the same time, 30 government Covid hospitals will continue to run and will be strengthened further,” Mohapatra said.
Other private hospitals which are admitting patients on payment basis would continue to offer treatment at government approved rates.
The ACS-health wrote to all district collectors and municipal commissioners to de-hire the private hospitals while continue to deploy manpower in government-run Covid hospitals till further orders. Similarly, all Covid care centres and corona care homes were closed with retrospective effect from January 1.
The government move came amid number of active positive cases falling below 2000. The state now has 1972 active positive cases after 271 more recovered on Tuesday. Of them more than 90% are in home isolation. Another 198 tested positive for the virus, raising the virus case load in state to 330690. Two more died increasing the death toll to 1887.