Taking serious note of observations made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on equipment in various hospitals that are either unused or there is no maintenance resulting in wastage of resources, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister JP Nadda has directed officials to devise appropriate mechanisms to ensure that medical equipment are maintained beyond their guarantee period.
On the instructions of the Health Minister, a massive exercise to map the inventory of all biomedical equipment was undertaken, including their functionality status.
The mapping was successfully completed in 29 states resulting in 7,56,750 equipment in 29,115 health facilities costing approximately Rs 4,564 crore being identified. It was also noted that equipment in range of 13 percent to 34 percent was found to be dysfunctional across states. The cost of dysfunctional equipment is Rs 1,015.74 crore.
The ministry has also prepared comprehensive guidelines on Biomedical Equipment Management and Maintenance Program (BMMP), linked with uptime of equipment. Under BMMP, support is being provided to state governments to outsource medical equipment maintenance comprehensively for all the equipment across all the facilities.
During the review, it was found that Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Mizoram, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Jharkhand and Puducherry have outsourced the maintenance. Three states Tripura, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh have completed the tendering process and are in the program implementation stage.
Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Gujarat are in the process of finalising the tenders.
Expressing satisfaction over the exercise, Nadda stated that the implementation of BMMP has helped in improving diagnostics services in health facilities, thereby reducing cost of care and improving the quality of care in public health facilities.
