VIJAYAWADA: The Health department committee, headed by Aarogyasri Chief Executive Officer A Mallikarjuna Yadav and Director of Public Health and Family Welfare Dr Aruna Kumari, has found fault with Ramesh Hospitals in the fire accident that occurred on August 9.
The report was submitted to Special Chief Secretary, Health, Medical and Family Welfare KS Jawahar Reddy on Saturday.
As per the report, the Ramesh Hospitals flouted norms in establishing and running COVID-19 Care Centres (CCCs), and in following the ICMR protocol for diagnosis, treatment and plasma therapy.
As part of their probe, the committee visited the CCCs operated by Ramesh Hospitals here and collected information from the District Collector and the District Medical and Health Office (DM&HO).
They reported that the DM&HO allowed the Ramesh Hospitals to run the CCCs at Swarna Palace and Swarna Heights only from July 19, but patients were admitted to the CCCs at Swarna Heights from July 13, and at Swarna Palace from July 15. The hospital management further used M5 hotel Metropolitan Hotel without obtaining requisite permission from the officials, the report stated.
The hospital also violated orders of the Health department on admitting suspected cases.
“As per the orders, the CCCs are meant to admit mild symptomatic and asymptomatic patients who don’t have facilities for home isolation. But the hospital admitted persons with mild symptoms and charged Rs 20,000 for medical service, excluding treatment costs and tests, and collected Rs 5,000 as hotel charges,” it read. The management failed to honour the DM&HO’s condition of reserving 10 isolation beds to treat patients under the Aarogyasri scheme.
The panel found violations in adhering to the ICMR protocol on diagnosis of the virus. The hospital reportedly admitted the patients before confirming they had COVID-19 through tests such as RTPCR, TrueNat and Rapid Antigen tests.
“The ICMR suggested RTPCR as gold standard and approved TrueNat and Rapid Antigen tests to detect the virus. But the hospital admitted people based on CT scan findings ,” it added.
On the violations of treatment protocol and SOP, the panel reported that patients were administered a mixture of antibiotics, antivirals and other medicines without assessing the severity of the virus.