Pending dues of empaneled private hospitals likely to be cleared soon: Official sources

The pending dues of private hospitals empaneled with Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Arogya Yojana (AB-PMAY) are likely to be cleared in a week, official sources in the Health and Medical Education Department said on Tuesday.

Notably, a number of private hospitals and diagnostic centres were empaneled for providing treatment to patients under the AB-PMAY scheme but inordinate delay in getting payments has prompted them to refuse dispensing services to the patients.

However, the financial liabilities of the scheme have mounted to around Rs.70 crore.

More than 160 Government and private hospitals in J&K have been empaneled under the scheme.
“About Rs.70 crores are to be paid to empaneled hospitals, out of which about 50 percent is to be paid to private hospitals as the payments have not been cleared since months,” sources added.

They said that the delay in clearance of dues has severely affected the financial health of private hospitals as they failed to provide salaries to staff/employees besides meeting day-to-day expenses.

A senior official associated with the scheme pleading anonymity said that people are facing problems with non-payment of dues but all pending dues are expected to be cleared within a week.

“A meeting in this regard was also chaired by senior official of the department and he assured that all payments will be released by the end of this week,” he revealed.

As per laid norms under the centrally sponsored scheme, the reimbursement to hospitals has to be cleared within 15 days.