State staff snub subsidy, prefer private hospitals

In the strangest twist, health cards being issued by the Telangana government to its own employees are proving useless in cases involving emergency or trauma care. Why? Because they are not being recognised by private, corporate hospitals.

And stuck in this situation are the government employees who refuse to go to government hospitals because of non-availability of senior doctors for urgent surgeries or emergency trauma care.

A senior employee, whose son had suffered a head injury in an accident, explained the problem.

“I knew there was no point taking my son to Gandhi Hospital. It will only have junior doctors on call. I then picked a corporate hospital because they would offer the best, urgent treatment.”

But health cards of government staff are of no use at corporate hospital because no MoUs have been signed with the government.

TS employees and the holders of health cards have been constantly asking the government to sign MoUs with corporate hospitals as they say they are not keen on care at government hospitals at all.

Another senior government employee said: “Diagnostics is a major problem. They take a lot of time and these government hospitals are not even clean. The quality of wards is also very bad.”

Others say there are no senior doctors at government hospitals after 2 p.m or after lunch.

Govind Hari, secretary of the Telanagana Superspeciality Hospitals Association said: “For trauma care, a maximum number of employees are picking corporate hospitals because of the best care and facilities.”

Interestingly, 200 hospitals in the city have signed an MoU with the government but the 18 private hospitals who have not, are in demand when it comes to emergency care.

Health minister Dr Laxma Reddy said: “We are working hard to improve the infrastructure by purchasing the best of equipment for diagnostics. Equipments worth `24 crore has been purchased for Nims. The issue of non-availability of doctors will also be sorted soon.”