The State government has granted permission to private hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients and fixed treatment rates separately for both critical and non-critical patients under the Dr. YSR Aarogyasri scheme. The private hospitals should get permission from the district Collector and get notified.
Special Chief Secretary (Department of Health, Medical and Family Welfare) K.S. Jawahar Reddy on Wednesday issued an order to this effect.
As per the recommendations of the technical committee that was headed by Dr. Jawahar Reddy, the government fixed the total cost per day for a non-critical patient at an Aarogyasri-empanelled private hospital at ₹3,250.
The per day cost for patients requiring critical care has been fixed between ₹5,480 and ₹10, 380 depending on the requirement of ICU facility, ventilator and other treatment procedures and equipment.
The cost covers hospital expenditure on medical personnel, PPE, disinfection, investigations, medicines and nutrition provided to the patient in both critical and non-critical cases.
A patient will be considered non-critical if his or her symptoms and chest X-ray are normal.
Categorisation
The government further asked the Collectors to classify private hospitals into three categories — exclusive COVID hospitals (Category A), hospitals that treat COVID and non-COVID patients(Category B) and hospitals that treat only non-COVID patients (Category C).
Collectors will issue permissions to the private hospitals and notify them under Category A and Category B after verification of the infrastructure.
Hospitals not empanelled under Aarogyasri have to display per day costs fixed by the government at the reception and maintain a detailed case sheet for every patient.
The Category A and Category B hospitals are also asked to provide treatment in case of emergency without waiting for the test result for COVID.
In case of such an emergency in Category C hospital and the need for better treatment, the hospital is responsible for transferring the patient to either Category A or Category B hospital.
