By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 10 Mar: Yet another private hospital in Uttarakhand has been caught submitting fake claims of treatment of patients under Atal Ayushman Health Scheme. The fraud has been exposed in an audit conducted by the State Health Authority. As per the audit conducted, Kalindi Hospital and Research Institute located at Chakrata Road in Vikasnagar here is among the hospitals empanelled under the Ayushman Scheme for providing free treatment of Ayushman Card holders. The hospital has been served with a notice and given 5 days to respond to the notice. The hospital in question had allegedly submitted claims to the tune of Rs 50 lakhs for treatment of 243 patients under Ayushman Scheme. The hospital had claimed the amount for allegedly treating 173 patients for urology problems, 48 patients under general medicines (internal medicines) and 22 patients were allegedly operated upon surgically for various problems. The Hospital had claimed that the patients had been treated by Dr HS Rawat and the documents submitted by the hospital included OT, admission and discharge summary of the patients all of which were allegedly signed by Dr HS Rawat. However, Dr HS Rawat has informed the State Health Authority in writing that he had not treated any of the said patients and he does not treat patients at the Kalindi Hospital. He has his own Medicare Hospital at Selaqui.
The State Health Authority’s Additional Director Administration Atul Joshi has issued a notice to the hospital management and sought a response within five days. After this, action is likely to be taken by the authority to blacklist the hospital under the Ayushman scheme. It is worth noting that so far action has been taken against 58 private hospitals in the state during the past 4 years for submitting false claims under Ayushman Scheme and the State Health Authority has also recovered an amount of Rs 110 crore besides imposing a penalty of Rs 4.5 crore so far against the errant hospitals.
