58 more govt hospitals to be outsourced.

PESHAWAR -- Following the assessment of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's 58 more 'low-performing' public sector hospitals by the World Bank, the health department is awaiting the cabinet's go-ahead for agreements with private organisations to operate those healthcare facilities through public-private partnerships.

Officials told Dawn that the health department had completed Phase I of the bidding process for the handover of those hospitals to NGOs under the Public Private Partnership Act 2016 for better operations.

They said those hospitals were identified during the last government but the health department got them reassessed through the World Bank to know exactly their 'weaknesses' for the information of private organisations before their outsourcing through bidding.

The officials said the World Bank had nothing to do with the exercise of contracting out those health facilities as it had just carried out the assessment under its Human Capital Project at the request of the provincial government to know about the prevalent services and shortage of staff and medicines.

They said the health department's Health Foundation had sent the assessment report to the government and requested it to inform it about the availability of funds before inviting private parties to run the facilities under the PPP initiative.

The officials said the cabinet's formal approval would prevent future problems for the healthcare initiative and ensure its smooth sailing to the benefit of the people.

They said if the government didn't guarantee the provision of funds, the idea of contracting out more hospitals won't see execution especially amid the unsettled funding issues of the 19 public sector hospitals outsourced during the last few years.

The officials said the finance department hadn't released funds for 11 outsourced hospitals since last year and that a committee had been formed to check services at those healthcare facilities operated through public-private partnerships.

They said though many of those hospitals located in newly-merged tribal districts had threatened to suspend free healthcare, the department was verifying...