Patients suffer as Golden Cards not accepted at major private hospitals

SRINAGAR — Poor patients in Kashmir division are suffering as their Golden Cards are not being accepted at many major private hospitals. Many cases uploaded by the patients are rejected by the concerned authorities.

Several patients told news agency Kashmir News Observer (KNO) that despite hospitals empanelled to provide cashless treatment to patients with Golden Card, their cards aren’t being accepted.

An employee of Khyber Hospital Srinagar said that the hospital is empanelled under the scheme since 2018. He said that in policy periods 3 and 4, 805 cases were rejected by authorities just with the excuse that required documents were not uploaded on time.

He said that most of these 805 cases are of January to April last year worth Rs 1.91 crore and despite informing authorities on time that uploading may take a few days extra as staff were being tested positive, they never stopped their services.

“Despite verbal and written assurances since then, nothing has been done despite requesting authorities to call patients whether they have got free services or not,” an official said.

He said on December 26, 2020, the scheme was made universal and till then it was just for some categories. After making it universal, the rush of patients increased as well and part of the payment after April 2021 has been already released.

He further added that there was an agreement of three years starting from 2018 and on December 22, 2021, it expired and Bajaj Alliance was the insurance company. “Before one month of expiry of the agreement, we forwarded authorities a letter of the expiry date and informed them that the agreement is expiring and asked them to inform us about further plans but nothing has been done as of now,” he said.

“Due to rejection and untimely payment, we have been suffering as we were unable to provide payment to our suppliers on time,” he said, adding that presently Golden Cards are being accepted for dialysis only which was continued on the humanitarian grounds after directions from authorities.

Sources from Shifa Hospital Srinagar also said that golden cards are being accepted for gallbladder and haemorrhoid surgeries only.

Meanwhile, a top official of the Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna scheme acknowledged that people are facing a lot of problems. However, he said, “We are in transition mode from one insurance company to another and the other company has not taken over yet which is expected to happen within two to three days.”

“Once new company will join, operations will start once again,” he said, adding that an audit of rejected cases is going on which is being submitted to authorities at the earliest.

“He said rejections are there in few major hospitals and there are some technical issues as well due to which hiccups have come and once a new company will join, all issues will get resolved,” he said.