PANAJI
Commissioned almost three years ago, the super-speciality block of the Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim, is steadily finding its feet even as the State government continues to foot big bills for cancer and heart disease related treatment of Goans in hospitals like KLES at Belagavi and Tata Memorial in Mumbai among others.
Over the last four years, as many as 463 patients, mostly suffering from cancer and heart diseases, were treated in the GMCH and some other private hospitals accredited under the State government's Deen Dayal Health Service Scheme (DDSSY).
While 300-odd of these patients were treated at the GMC, the rest were referred to private hospitals in Goa like the Victor-Apollo and Manipal hospitals, the latter reimbursed through DDSSY, the State government's universal medical insurance scheme.
In the same 4-year period, some 303 cancer and heart disease patients underwent treatment at hospitals in other States for which the State government footed the hefty bills again under the DDSSY scheme.
KLE Hospital in Belgaum got the lion's share with 91 patients referred to it. Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, with whom the State government has tied up to train medical staff in cancer treatment, treated 68 patients in these four years.
Additionally, the Goa government also footed bills through the DDSSY of Goan patients treated in some private hospitals in Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune.
According to info provided by the Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, cancer and heart disease patients are treated at the GMCH but in certain cases where better treatment is needed, the patients are referred to DDSSY empanelled hospitals in other States.
Rane said, the State government shelled out Rs 203.21 crore in payments to private hospitals under DDSSY in these four years. These include private hospitals both in Goa and other States.
The government spend on such patients referred for treatment outside of the GMCH in 2019 was about Rs 34 crore in in 2019-20, Rs 43.26 crores in 2020-21, Rs 53.04 crore in 2021-22 and 39.98 crore in 2022-23.
Private hospitals paid for super-speciality treatments in the current fiscal thus far (until June 30) is about Rs 32.92 crore, he added.
The government footing the bills of Goans seeking specialised treatment in private hospitals, including big-name hospitals like KLES-Belagavi and Tata Memorial-Mumbai, is not new and is a scheme that existed from the early 1990s.
Currently and for some years now, it is the DDSSY managed through tie-ups with insurance companies while its previous avtaar was the 'mediclaim scheme' wherein patients had to foot their bills at first and then claim reimbursement through the health department financed by budgetary allocations.
