AP chalks out plan to give face-lif to govt hospitals within 3 months

Hyderabad, April 7: With Andhra Pradesh government set to come out with a new sanitation policy for government hospitals, the health and medical welfare department has outlined key indicators to rate medical services to citizens.

Some of the indicators are cleanliness, attendance, consumable usage and uniform. The government is mulling introducing a rating/score-card system which will track the performance of the health personnel through an online system from May 1st, 2015.

The online tracking system will also give updates on the medicines prescribed, medicines sold, etc. The website that will give continuous updates from hospitals iswww.apmsidcho.com.

For this, the Chief Minister suggested that the health department could have a central monitoring cell through which they can track updates. This will also include seeking feedback from citizens on the services offered.

During a review meeting held on sanitation in Secretariat today, the Chief Minister suggested that Medical Colleges too should be brought under this ambit of the new sanitation policy.

The Chief Minister has asked the health department to outsource the sanitary management including maintenance of toilets, water supply, improvement of drains, electrical wiring/fitting, windows and doors, floors and roof, signages and beautification works.

The officials informed the CM that they will complete the works within 3 months.

He added that sanitary management of Area Hospitals and Community Health Centres could be outsourced to agencies while in PHCs, the management could happen by creating an advisory committee and a corpus fund.

The officials from health and medical welfare department informed the Chief Minister that Rs60 crore has been released for face-lifting of all government hospitals in the state.

The Chief Minister said that an additional Rs50 crore to Rs100 crore could be spent on upgrading and maintenance of hospitals. This also includes changing/replacing old beds with new ones.

He added that the government could also explore options to give a call to corporate and individuals interested to take up mechanized laundry/linen-changing, investing on new beds in hospitals, etc through Corporate Social Responsibility.

Ministers Kamineni Srinivas and P. Narayana, Principal Secretary to CM Satish Chandra, Secretary (health) L.V. Subramanyam and other officials were present.