KP women avail free Sehat Card Plus facilities more than men

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Sehat Card Plus (SCP) has shown remarkable female inclusion in the Sehat Card Plus program.

According to data, 56% of women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa used Sehat Card Plus (SCP) compared to 44% of men. As a result, 594,277 (56%) of the 1,058,797 SCP hospital admissions were women, while 464,520 (44%) were men.

The data further reveals that Sehat Card Plus was utilized at 1,100 hospitals nationwide.

In terms of age, 4,66,177 people ages 30 to 59 received health treatments under the program, followed by 2,99,904 patients ages 10 to 29. Under the program, hospitals treated 202,696 60-to-79-year-olds and 19,720 over 80. In addition, 70,300 youngsters under 10 received SCP.

The government has spent Rs25.834 billion on free treatment, with Rs5.24 billion going to cardiac patients, Rs3.10 billion to general surgery, Rs2.39 billion to gynecology, and over Rs1 billion on medical, neurosurgery, orthopedic, oncology, urology, and cardiac surgery.

49 patients received free liver transplants costing Rs199 million, according to data. Each instance costs Rs5 million because it’s the most expensive SCP operation for KP citizens.

73 individuals received free kidney transplants costing Rs102 million. SCP’s second expensive treatment is a kidney transplant.

Peshawar has 108,127 beneficiaries, Mardan has 101,385, Swat has 98,691, Charsadda has 66,297, Swabi has 74,566, Lower Dir has 63,002, Abbottabad has 56,855, Mansehra has 48,052, Buner has 33,143, Haripur has 32,203, Malakand has 30,906, Shangla has 28,824, Dera Ismail Khan has 24,180, and Hangu has 13,866

In newly-merged districts where SCP was expanded in June after federal financing stopped, 15,880 patients received care from Khyber, 7,310 from Mohmand, 3,774 from South Waziristan, and 3,587 from North Waziristan.

Private hospitals still receive most of the funding. Private health institutions admitted 707,098 [67%] patients, and public sector 351699 [33%]. The former earned Rs17.30 billion and the latter Rs8.53 billion from the provincial government’s flagship program, which gives 9.5 million families free services in selected hospitals across the country.

As their infrastructure is better than private hospitals, the government has asked public hospitals to accept more SCP patients to collect more cash. But unfortunately, many public sector facilities haven’t implemented the government’s mechanism for distributing program cash, so doctors aren’t interested.

Some public hospitals receive a considerable sum from SCP and split it with doctors and other personnel. Private hospitals receive more patients than governmental hospitals due to their setup.

The government plans to start hospital awareness seminars to increase patients and revenue. Lady Reading Hospital, the province’s largest, directed staff to treat SCP patients last month.

The health department wants hospitals to earn more from the scheme after extending it to the entire province in December 2020.