Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, May 19: After the Health Department brought in a uniform rate structure across the hospitals for laboratory tests, it is finally working to bring in the same with regard to the investigations such as MRI and CT scan across all the Government hospitals in J&K.
Before the move of bringing in the uniform rate structure-that was carried out few months ago-different hospitals were charging differently for various laboratory tests. Frequent complaints were received by the Health Department, which was finally forced to bring in such uniformity.
Director Finance, Health and Medical Education Department, Muhammad Rafiq told Excelsior that after a uniform rate structure with regard to the laboratory tests was put in place and the department was working to bring in the same structure with regard to the investigations in every hospital of the State.
“We brought in that uniform structure with regard to the lab tests few months ago and there was a need of having such a structure in place as there was nothing like that in place before. Now, we are trying to put a step ahead and bring in the same structure for the investigations such as CT scans, X-Rays, USGs, and MRIs etc.,” he said.
He said that there was no set structure in place earlier for having uniformity of rates across the hospitals and the patients were charged differently at different hospitals for different tests.
“It looked weird that a patient was being charged one amount for one test at one particular hospital. The charges of the same test were different at another hospital; that was not good. So with our efforts to bring in the uniformity, we were able to put in place the rate structure in all the hospitals by virtue of the rate structure,” he said.
The Health Department directed the hospitals falling in Kashmir division to follow the rate structure of SMHS, Srinagar and those in Jammu division were asked to follow the rate structure of SMGS, Jammu.
He however, pointed that there was a need to having an eye on the ground to make sure that the uniform rate structure is being adhered to and the common masses are not made to suffer.
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