CGHS standoff: Hospitals discontinue cashless services

The row over withdrawal of cashless facility for Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) beneficiaries has escalated with the association of private hospitals demanding that government immediately clear the pending amount of over Rs 200 crore due to them.
The stand-off between the Union Health Ministry and private hospitals is likely to affect over a crore of CGHS beneficiaries including 30 lakh pensioners, 50 lakh serving government employees and their dependents.
A statement from the government last night promising that dues under the CGHS will be cleared in a week failed to convince private hospitals body-- Association of Healthcare Providers (India)--who today said they would not entertain cashless facility under the health scheme.

The hospitals are demanding immediate clearance of pending dues of over Rs 200 crore.
"Large and long pending payments far exceeded the agreed upon time frame...It takes weeks and months for hospitals to receive the money," the hospital association said in a statement.
Under the circumstances, it has become untenable for hospitals to continue giving cashless services as they are not getting paid for the services for months, it said.

"CGHS-owned dashboard showed Rs 202 crore as outstanding to hospitals as on January 31, 2014," it said.
Very little amount out of this has actually been received till now, whereas more bills have been raised and submitted by the hospitals, the statement said.

Hospitals are also being threatened that they should continue with cashless services, it added.
"CGHS is very conveniently avoiding the fact that Memorandum of Understanding (signed between them and the government) clearly provides with obligation on part of CGHS to pay the dues within 10 days," the association said.
"Hospitals very humbly want to know that with what legal and moral right, CGHS can ask hospitals about violating the terms and conditions, when CGHS itself has violated so openly the terms and conditions of the MoU. How can CGHS demand hospitals to continue cashless services when some of the hospitals in NCR have pending amount?," they asked.

Hospitals, through their association, have been holding meetings with CGHS since March 2013. "There has not been any improvement in the working of CGHS. Only when hospitals have been pushed to wall as explained above, they have been forced to withdraw cashless services," the statement said.
The Union health ministry is working on resolving the crisis.