The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has pointed out that certain corrupt officers are blocking the efforts to digitize bill payments for private hospitals and labs, which is intended to bring transparency and reduce corruption in handling Rs 1,000 crore in annual payments.
The AAP highlighted these officers, along with the Lieutenant Governor (LG), are advocating for a flawed Hospital Information Management System (HIMS) that lacks crucial modules for Mohalla Clinics, the Delhi Arogya Kosh (DAK) and Farishtey schemes, and outsourced labs.
Signaling towards a plausible collusion, the AAP has stated that the Hospital Information Management (HIMS) system was earlier tendered to an IT Company called NEC, however, after one year of engagement, they were not able to complete work and therefore their contract was terminated in 2023. Thereafter, the new Health Minister, Saurabh Bharadwaj himself visited several Hospitals where the NIC and C-DAC HIMS system was implemented.
There were discussions with both NIC and C-DAC about the specific requirements for developing modules of Mohalla Clinics, their outsourced Labs, DAK, Farishtey schemes of the Delhi Government. Both these Central Govt PSUs were asked to confirm if they will be able to develop modules for these flagship schemes of Delhi Govt. Only C-DAC has committed that they will be providing these modules specific to Delhi Govt.
The Health Department is responsible for processing bills of Medicines for Suppliers/Manufacturers, processing bills of Private Hospitals for DAK schemes and processing bills of Private Outsourced Laboratories. These bills run into more than Rs 1,000 crores yearly. There have been regular allegations on a group of officers in the Department of Health that they process bills of Vendors only when their demands of bribes are accepted.
Last year, even the then CM Arvind Kejriwal had also asked the Dept to enquire into such allegations. Moreover, it is a known fact that officers of the Health Department had stopped payments of several vendors on frivolous grounds and there is an apprehension that this is due to unreasonable demands of bribes for processing these due payments.
The Elected Government wants this entire process of bill submissions by Vendors, their scrutiny, their payments to be computerized and transparent. These modules for DAK and Mohalla Clinics will clamp down corruption. However, this group of corrupt officers do not want this computerized system of processing of bills to be implemented. Therefore, they are pushing for NIC based HIMS because NIC has not agreed to create separate modules for these processes.
It is surprising that even though it is a transferred subject, completely under the purview of the elected government of Delhi, the LG was also advocating the NIC system in the meeting with the Health Minister. If corruption of thousands of crores can be stopped using a software of few crores, why should any officer or LG office have a problem. It is strange that LG does not want this computerisation of Mohalla Clinics, and bill payments to private Laboratories and Private Hospitals under DAK scheme.