Grading of hospitals in state soon

HYDERABAD: In an attempt to encourage transparency in the health care sector, the government is planning to grade all health care institutes across the state based on various parameters.
The medical and health department will work out the modalities based on number of beds, medical equipment, location, staff strength and other facilities provided by nursing homes and hospitals.To begin with, the department will make registration mandatory for all health care institutes, a senior official said.
According to medical and health minister K Rosaiah, grading will be of immense help to people on various fronts. "For instance, hotels are being classified ���such as three star, five star, etc��� which has been helping customers know their standards.
In a similar way, if hospitals and nursing homes are graded, people will approach their choice of health care institutes, he said.
Besides, the move will bring a healthy competition among the hospital managements which, in the long run, could help improve the standard of health care, the minister said.
Rosaiah said the department would take up this exercise only after holding talks with representatives of the Indian Medical Association and AP hospitals' and nursing homes' associations.
According to sources, nursing homes and hospitals might be graded into three categories and each would be sub-classified further based on those parameters.
For instance, nursing homes will be graded based on the availability of intensive care unit (ICU), ambulance, in-house laboratory, sonography and x-ray machines.
In the later stage, the department will also try to standardise charges of nursing homes and hospitals, the official told The Sunday Times of India.
The official said that the move would also help insurance companies in curbing inflated bills and abnormal claims by patients as they can easily estimate the expenditure based on the grading.