Poor patients at PGI will no longer have to struggle from one department to another for clearance of their case seeking funds for treatment. PGI authorities have now authourised the Medical Superintendent to sanction funds to the tune of Rs 10,000 for these patients. Earlier,patients with poor free cards had to go to specific departments to get the documents vetted and then a committee comprising PGI faculty members used to give sanction for any patient requiring free treatment at PGI. Reducing the running around for patients between the departments,now any patient who needs financial assistance and requires medicines and treatment upto Rs 10,000 can get it from the Medical Superintendent,Dr A K Gupta. For treatment or medicines costing above Rs 10,000,a committee has been constituted comprising Dr A K Gupta as chairman,Dr Arun Agarwal,additional Medical Superintendent,Dr R Kapoor,of the department of Radiotherapy and Joint Medical Superintendent,Dr Pankaj Malhotra,Dr Devi Dyal of Department of Pediatrics,Dr Ajay Duseja of the Department of Hepatology and Public Relations Officer Manju Wadwalkar,who is the convener of the committee. Sources said that in the past the committee members were often unable to meet for the biweekly meetings as the faculty members were mostly from different departments and had to attend to patients and OPDs or were involved in research work. However,the present committee comprises of mainly the doctors from the department of the Hospital Administration who are available around the clock. In fact,PGI authorities are now discussing the revival of the old tradition of seeking public donations for individual patients in need for monetary help for surgeries. This practice had been discontinued for the past few years when there were specific cases wherein the patients and their family members had started arm twisting the PGI authorities to give the entire donations received in their names in cash. Since then PGI stopped seeking financial aid for specific patients and was only taking donations to Poor Patient Welfare Fund. However,since then the PPW fund has significantly dipped to Rs 7 lakh.
