TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The Goa Medical College is restricting the list of free medicines to be given to patients at Goa Medical College Hospital, to reduce their misuse, hospital authorities found was taking place there.
Sources in the health sector blame the government for delaying the approval of tender files leading to increased dependence on local purchases.
Director of Administration of Goa Medical College Swapnil Naik said that henceforth only those medicines which are in the new list will be provided free.
“The numbers are being restricted because the government found that there has been some misuse,” Naik said.
The Goa Medical College Hospital and its affiliate hospitals such as the Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Santa Inez, Rural Health Centre Mandur and Urban Health Centre Santa Cruz alone consume around 4.4444 crore units of medicine every year with government spending on these free medicines adding up to Rs 35 crore. Tenders are drawn up by the Goa Medical College and sent for approval to the government. Local purchases are decided upon at the local level.
He, however sought to allay fears that admitted patients would have to buy medicines, if the medicines they prescribe are not on the list.
“Many of the medicines have a very minor variation between types. In all cases, there are three to four alternative medicines. It’s not that we don’t have a substitute medicine that is not on the list. Doctors will have to adjust their prescriptions to ensure they prescribe a medicine that is on the list,” Naik said.
The Goa Medical College earlier used to give medicines free to all admitted and patients as prescribed by their doctors, free of cost. However, the GMC has been raking up huge medicine bills on local purchase owing to delays in sanctioning of tenders or underestimating the requirements at the time of tendering. This year the tendering has been further delayed owing to the restructuring process and striking off surplus items from the list.
Sources in the department say that the delays in government approvals for GMC tenders, lead to higher local purchase bills will be much less and that it is often difficult to predict requirements due to many variables in the demand.
Also, once the Deendayal Swasthya Seva (DDSS) universal health insurance scheme comes into play, the cost of medicines of those admitted will be paid for under the scheme.
“In this (DDSS) system, which has been recently tendered there are packages of particular services and operations for which there is a prescribed fee per procedure which includes the cost of medicines involved in that procedure. Some of the payments for these excluded medicines will come through the scheme,” Swapnil Naik said adding that the government was trying to implement both the reduced list of medicines and the DDSS at the same time.
The government in another decision, as part of its restructuring process has also decided to centralize purchases of medicines and medical supplies with the Directorate of Health Services (DHS). Earlier the GMC and DHS used to tender and purchase medicines separately. Now it will be following one tendering process. The DHS supplies medicines to the two district hospitals, the Ponda ID hospital, the Chicalim Cottage Hospital as well as community, urban and primary health centres across the state.
