Affordable Health Care Project For Odisha In The Offing

Bhubaneswar: As part of its efforts towards improvement of qualitative health care facilities in the state, the Odisha government has initiated steps for establishment of hospitals on PPP mode under the health sector investment policy.

A proposal to this effect was discussed at the Empowered Committee on Infrastructure meeting presided over by chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi at the State Secretariat here on Monday.

Principal Secretary (PPP Cell) Pradeep Kumar Jena presented the project while Secretary, Health & Family Welfare Pramod Kumar Meherda outlined the administrative and financial issues for discussion.

Padhi asked the concerned officials to decide locations of the hospitals taking into account the existing health service facilities and newly coming up medical colleges.

Development Commissioner R Balakrishan who was present at the meeting advised to prioritize the difficult areas having no secondary and tertiary health care facilities.

Talking to media persons after the meeting, Meherda said the meeting decided to set up new quality care hospitals mostly in KBK and KBK and other remote districts which would be set up on Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode.

“It was proposed in the meeting to establish 19 hospitals in 18 districts on the parameters of backwardness in health indicators.  These hospitals would be of two different categories. One type would be 100 beded and another type would be 200 beded. The total bed capacity in three different phases would be around 2600. The state government would provide land at concessional rate with other infrastructural facilities. The government would also decide the tariff of treatment in these hospitals. The private parties would make necessary investments for setting up the hospitals and they would bring in more specialists and clinical personnel,” he added.

As of now, an investor conference has already been held in Bhubaneswar to get inputs from potential investors regarding feasibility of the project and methods of its operation. Around 71 health care providing organizations from the state, national and international level participated in the conference and expressed their interest to invest in the project.

 As per available data, the project would create direct employment opportunity for 9500 persons.  The total private sector investment would be around Rs 1150 crore.

Issues relating to norms of transaction, conditions in bid document, viable gap funding from government, contract conditions, monitoring and management of the proposed project etc were discussed in the meeting.

The chief secretary directed the Health & Family Welfare department to prepare the detail project with inputs of the meeting and place it for government approval.

 Additional Chief Secretary Forest & Environment, Suresh Chandra Mohapatra; Principal Secretary Finance, Tuhin Kanta Pandey; Principal Secretary, Commerce & Transport G Srinivas; Secretary, Energy Hemant Kumar Sharma; Director, National Health Mission Salini Pandit and senior officers from respective departments were present at the meeting.