Four hospitals respond to ‘social obligations’ notice

Noida: Responses have started to trickle in from private hospitals to a notice served by the Gautam Budh Nagar administration on whether they had served their ‘social obligations’ during the second wave of the pandemic.
The notices were served after Jewar MLA Dhirendra Singh raised the issue in a letter to chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
Gautam Budh Nagar chief medical officer Deepak Ohri said the notices were dated May 19 and hospitals had been asked to reply within three days. However, by May 22 evening, only four responses had come.
“Some hospitals received the notice the same day while others sent us acknowledgement on May 20. We received responses from four hospitals by Saturday evening. Other hospitals are expected to respond on Sunday and Monday. We will compile their responses and forward it to the state government. Expertise and guidance of medical professionals is needed for such matters and we will wait for further directions,” said Ohri.
Compliance with corporate social responsibility rules and sections prescribed under the Companies Act, 2013, have to be evaluated by domain experts “All companies with a net profit of Rs 5 crore or more during a financial year need to have a mechanism in place to fulfil their corporate responsibilities. Even hospitals have to follow the guidelines stipulated under the Companies Act, 2013 and Social Responsibility Rules, 2014,” said Abhishek Yadav, a Supreme Court advocate-on-record.
Sources in the health department said the four hospitals that had responded had given details of the free medical aid they have given to some individuals.
“Volume of oxygen, medicines and free consultation provided to needy patients has been mentioned in the response,” said an official.
The notices had drawn an angry response from the Noida chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), which said such moves hurt the morale of private hospitals and doctors that had “shouldered 80% of the patient load in the district”.