Aarogyasri Trust sets up panel for network hospitals

Andhra Pradesh chief minister K Rosaiah on Sunday asked the Aarogyasri Trust to introduce stringent measures in order to ensure the best quality medical care to the beneficiaries and to avoid unethical practices by network hospitals.

In this context, the officials concerned said for standardisation of empanelment of network hospitals, a post of chief medical auditor has been created to continuously monitor the quality of medical care being provided to the beneficiaries.

The trust constituted an empanelment and disciplinary committee (EDC) under the chairmanship of chief medical auditor of the trust. The committee will ensure that the hospital has the adequate infrastructure, manpower, equipment etc. as per the standards for empanelment under the scheme.

The process of empanelment has been made online to bring in absolute transparency in the procedure.

The officials said the hospital will submit online application, and if the infrastructure was lacking according to basic requirement like bed strength being less than 50, the application will be rejected at the scrutiny level itself.

If the basic infrastructure is adequate but other information like facilities and photographs are not uploaded, the application will be kept pending giving reasons and advising hospital to upload the same, the officials said in a press release.

Once all the required documents and necessary photographs are uploaded, the application will be registered and then the trust will organise inspection of the hospital by senior officials, specialists and the insurance company. The Inspection team will submit its report to the EDC, which will scrutinise the inspection report, photographic and video graphic evidence along with online documents.

The EDC will also look into all the complaints against the hospitals received from various sources including from patients, call centre, field staff, press clippings among others.

A show cause notice with warning and order to withhold payments, suspension, suspension with order to withhold payments, de-empanelment and delisting etc will be initiated as found necessary, the release added.