Community health centre scheme on PPP mode gains momentum

After the government's go-ahead signal, the process of inviting bids for community health centres (CHCs), numbering 16, mostly in remote hilly areas of the state through the public-private partnership (PPP) mode, has started getting some momentum.

The bids for operations and management of eight CHCs was opened on February 20.

Sheel Nursing Home Group of Barrielly was declared the preferred bidder based on their lowest financial offer in both the projects. The PPP partner will manage all clinical, IPD and OPD services besides maintaining the physical assets for a period of five years. Each of the CHC will have minimum six specialists and other medical professionals besides para medical team.

The user charges will be collected at the government rates. The PPP partner will get a fixed maintenance charge from the government for running these CHCs, officials said.

The financial bidding process for another 8 CHCs bundled into two more projects is due on March 15.

Each project consists of combination of CHCs in plain and hill area. These CHCs are equipped, physically and clinically, as per Indian Public Health System (IPHS) standard. Since the government is unable to place medical team as per IPHS standard in remote CHCs, it has opted PPP as mode for service delivery. These CHCs will provide medical services throughout the day at no additional cost to patients and handle OPD, IPD, surgery, emergency, maternity cases and diagnostic services including X-ray, Ultra Sound, Pathology etc.

"Most of these CHCs are in remote hilly areas and doctors are not willing to work there. Since, some of the PPP projects in the health sector have already given good results, we have decided to take a new initiative to put some of our health centres on PPP mode," said chief sectary Alok Kumar Jain.

Uttarakhand PPP Cell, which was set up in 2008 with the help of experts from ADB, has packaged the CHCs in such a way that doctors would have the option to seek transfer in the plains also after working in the hills.

In order to make the PPP investments better, the cell has clubbed all the 16 CHCs in four different packages in such a way that remote hilly areas are linked with the plains. For example, CHCs at Chaukhatia and Lohaghat in hilly districts of Almora and Champawat have been clubbed with Bajpur in the plains. "If a doctor wants to transfer himself or herself after working for sometime in Lohaghat, he or she has the option to get transfer to Bajpur in the plains," said Jain.

All the 16 CHCs would run all the central health schemes and other vaccination campaigns meant for spreading the arrest of epidemics. For this purpose, the government has made it mandatory that at least two government doctors would sit in these centres when they start working under PPP mode.

Significantly, the government is running a series of health projects on PPP mode in order to overcome the growing health demand in the state and meet the severe shortage of doctors.