CMCH Included In State Illness Asst Fund
The Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH) has been included for coverage under the State Illness Assistance Fund for chronically ill patients.This is part of a scheme to enable Government hospitals to provide quality medical care to poor persons suffering from chronic diseases in the kidney, heart valve and also orthopaedic problems such as arthritis. Dean (in-charge) V. Kumaran told presspersons that the Government had sanctioned Rs.10 lakh for the hospital. “This amount will be maintained as a corpus,” he said. If the hospital spent Rs.2 lakh on a surgery or specifically for prosthesis (such as knee joint) or equipment, the Government would reimburse the amount upon furnishing the bills and other records. This would ensure that a sum of Rs.10 lakh was always available. The Dean said that items not in the central purchase list could be bought locally if those with superior quality were required.
For instance, if an orthopaedic surgeon was not happy with the quality of a prosthetic (artificial) knee joint, it could be bought from sources other than the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation by using the fund. Head of the Department of Orthopaedics S. Senthilnathan said: “We are doing a lot of major orthopaedic surgeries to treat chronic problems in hip and knee joints. The fund will be very useful for the patients undergoing these surgeries. It can also be useful in meeting the costs of heart valve replacement and kidney transplantation procedures.”
