The Chhattisgarh Doctors Federation (CGDF) has filed a memorandum to the state government requesting them to include the critical care medicine specialists in the Ayushman Bharat -Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY). The federation pointed out that the existing system lacks sufficient representation of experts required to handle the severely ill patients which affects the standard of care.
President of CGDF who is Dr. Heera Singh Lodhi, stressed that critical care specialists are specifically trained to offer life saving treatments at Intensive Care Unit (ICUs). He said they should be incorporated in the PM-JAY structure in order to provide timely and improved treatment to seriously ill patients.
According to Dr. A. Prasant, the vice president of the federation, the involvement of such specialists has a strong influence on increasing the number of patients who recover and decreasing the duration of their stay in the hospital which in turn decreases the load on the healthcare system. Dr. Judo president, Resham said that although PM-JAY has already accommodated most of the super-specialty services, it has not formally been recognized to cover critical care medicine specialists. This has posed a challenge in the operations of the ICUs particularly in the management of complex and emergency cases.
The federation also emphasized the fact that inclusion of critical care specialists under PM-JAY would favor Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities as this would provide advanced ICU services to the non-metropolitan cities. This would decrease the reliance of patients in rural and remote areas on large hospitals in urban areas and would provide equal access to life-saving care throughout the state.
CGDF challenged the government to act promptly to ensure that critical care medicine is formally recognized in the PM-JAY scheme, and so the quality of healthcare service delivery and patient outcomes in Chhattisgarh can be better.