BHUBANESWAR: Odisha Government has prescribed a set of guidelines for private hospitals having trauma care facilities of level-1 standard to provide free treatment to victims of road accidents in the first 48 hours.
As per the guidelines, patients suffering from trauma due to road accidents and picked up by any private/public ambulances or Good Samaritans will be taken to the nearest trauma care centre.
If the trauma care centre is a private one, the hospital will start immediate appropriate treatment (stabilisation, emergency medical or surgical management including intensive care) and intimate the Director of Medical Education and Training (DMET) about the arrival of the patient describing briefly about the time of admission, nature of injury and condition besides the approximate estimate of expenditure that may occur during 48 hours.
The DMET will release a formal permission letter to go ahead with the treatment either by e-mail or any electronic medium. The private hospitals will submit the claim along with supporting documents, including a declaration that no money has been collected from the patient during the 48 hours of treatment, for reimbursement of treatment cost. The expenses will be provided from the Road Safety Fund.
In case the treatment has started in one private hospital and the patient is transferred to another hospital, then the 48-hour period will be calculated from the time of admission in the first hospital.If the patient is treated initially in a Government hospital and then referred to a private one, then the treatment time will be calculated from the time of admission in the latter.
The guidelines stated that the patient has to bear the cost of treatment beyond the first 48 hours.
Free treatment will be available in Ashwini Hospital at Cuttack and Apollo and AMRI Hospitals in the Capital City on a pilot basis for six months to assess the annual financial implication and take a decision for further continuance of the scheme in trauma care centre in the State.
