The meeting of private practitioners with Health Minister Amar Agarwal and officials of his department on the issue of smart cards could not take place on Wednesday, sources said. The private practitioners had a lengthy meeting with the newly-appointed Health Secretary MK Raut on Tuesday evening in which he had assured to look into their demand on the revision of rates for treatment using the smart cards.
There is an ongoing tussle going on between private hospitals and State Government over treatment rates using smart cards by the beneficiaries under RSBY and MSBY schemes.
The rates for treatment using smart card schemes were recently revised by the State Government after several round of talks with the private hospitals.
However, the private practitioners were unhappy with the revised rates and started surrendering the ‘mastar card’ machines to the Government.
A delegation from the Indian Medical Association (IMA) had met Chief Minister Raman Singh a day back in which he had stated that a meeting of the private practitioners would be held with the Health Minister and officials of his Department to sort out the problem.
According to IMA State President Dr Ajay Sahay, the Health Minister has returned to Raipur but due to his busy schedule a meeting with him could not happen and another date for the meeting would be announced later.
On his reported statement that nothing could be done on treatment using the smart cards, Sahay commented that it would be premature to say anything about the issue at the moment.
The MoU with the State Government was signed on October 13 and the new rates could be implemented after that date, he said.
Dr Sahay said that an IMA delegation had met the new Health Secretary MK Raut on Tuesday evening and he was handed over the list of rates of five states and detailed information was provided on the rates to him.
He said that money in the range of `1.50 lakh to `2 lakh is being spent by the State Government in other States for treating the poor while a flat rate of `30,000 had been fixed in Chhattisgarh to treat all category of patients.
The Health Secretary has asked the delegation to think and inform him regarding the possibility of providing more benefits under the smart card schemes.
President of IMA Nursing Home Association, Dr Sandeep Dave said that it would be only known after meeting the Health Minister what he thinks about the smart card issue. ‘It is useless to comment on the issue at the moment,’ he added.