THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With small and medium-scale private hospitals finding it hard to compete with multi-speciality hospitals in the state, the IMA has come up with an initiative to make these hospitals on a par with big corporate hospitals.
The association has taken up the initiative for assisting these hospitals to get the certification of National Accreditation Board for Hospitals (NABH), which would help them achieve national as well as international standards.
The project launched by IMA’s Hospital Board of India six months ago has already got 65 hospitals enrolled in the state. Mostly the hospitals are from the south, especially up to Thrissur district. One hospital has already got NABH and ten more have applied for the accreditation among those enrolled. In Kerala, the project is being implemented by Bangalore-based ISOS consultancy Services Pvt Ltd.
With the decrease in the number of small and medium hospitals that had always helped in bringing down the expenditure of health care in the last many years, the objective will help in increasing the viability of these hospitals, IMA state president V G Pradeep Kumar said.
One of the main objectives of the IMA is to help small and medium hospitals to survive and remain viable. The IMA shall help hospitals prepare for NABH entry-level accreditation at much lesser cost than private players in the market, he said. In the coming days, not only private hospitals but Government hospitals also should have to go for NABH accreditation.
Once the hospitals get NABH accreditation, it would help in ensuring minimum health standards that are being looked upon by the people, Kumar said. Moreover, he said everything was for the betterment of the public health care system. Stating that the model developed by IMA was cost- effective, ISOS managing director Ranjith R Menon said the charge levied by IMA for a 50-bed hospital is Rs 50,000. while the charge for 50 to 100-bed hospitals is Rs 1 lakh, the charge for 100-bed to 200-bed hospital is Rs 1.5 lakh. And for hospitals above 200 beds, the charge is Rs 2 lakh.
However, he said the cost levied by an agency for giving technical assistance for entry-level accreditation comes to Rs 3 to 4 lakh for a hospital and for full accreditation Rs 7 to 12 lakh.
Noting that cost-cutting will be effected through cluster formation and training in groups, Menon said the state has been divided into four clusters - South, South Central, North and North Central. All the hospitals in the cluster will have the same model and as such the cost could be brought down, he said. The target is for enrolling as many as 150 hospitals, he added.