Driven to the wall, hosps to halt Aarogyasri services from today

Hyderabad: Alleging huge delay in payment of the dues to the tune of Rs 1,400 crore by the government, the Telangana Aarogyasri Network Hospitals Association (TANHA) on Monday announced that it would stop these Aarogyasri Health Insurance services from Tuesday.

The decision comes after several rounds of discussions with the government officials. The TANHA representatives said that Rs 1,400 crore was to be paid to small and medium private hospitals through Aarogyasri services.

The association criticized the government for its serious delay in paying these dues. The association said that no positive announcement was received from the government so far on this hence they had to resort to taking strike.

The Private Hospitals Association stated in a statement that due to lack of funds, the hospitals were not in a position to run them. It is reported that there were about 400 hospitals on the list of hospitals that need to receive bills.

The managements were complaining that the government had not been paying cash to the hospitals for the last year. However, the hospital management said that they issued an ultimatum to the government on this issue on August 31.

They made it clear to the government that they would stop the services from midnight on that day. It said that the Health Minister C Damodar Raja Narsimha stepped in and spoke to the Finance Minister and promised to release the funds. However, it was revealed that they were going on strike as the funds were not received so far.

The TANHA in a statement said, “There are many problems in delivering effective services to the beneficiaries of Aarogyasri, EHS, and JHS, with a looming danger of closure of many of our members’ hospitals in view of financial overburden.” They said that they were facing financial burden because of non-payment by the government and they were unable to pay salaries to their doctors and they were not willing to work affecting the services.

There was a similar situation during January this year when the TANHA members had decided to stop the services. However, they called off their strike after the Health Minister assured them to solve the issues of the hospitals and asked them not to cause inconvenience to the poor patients.

He had said that during the previous government while the average payment was Rs 500 crore the Congress government made payments of over Rs 1,000 crore.

He assured to clear the dues within six months and ensure there is no due. With promise not being solved, the hospitals have resorted to stopping the services.