ESIC
EMBARKS ON SETTING UP MODEL HOSPITALS
The Labour Minister Shri Sharad Yadav
initiated the process of setting up model hospitals by the Employees
State Insurance Corporation with the laying of the foundation
stone of a new ESI Hospital at Gurgaon in Haryana this morning.
The one-hundred bed hospital being set up at a cost of Rs. 15
crore will have most modern and state of art diagnostic and treatment
facilities. It would have specialist service facilities for cardiology
with an Intensive Care Unit, Radio diagnostic services including
CAT Scan, a Blood Bank and a modern laboratory. The hospital will
cater bring secondary medical care to the doorstep of about four
lakh workers and their families in the heavily industralised Gurgaon
- Rewari belt. Speaking on the occasion Shri Sharad Yadav said
that about Rs.150 crore have been earmarked in the current year's
budget for setting up of 15 Model Hospitals and two super specialty
centres including a Cardio Thoracic Centre in the country. The
Minister said that 11 of the 15 State Governments approached so
far have consented for developing one ESI hospital as a model
hospital in their states. He said that the model hospitals would
be run by the Corporation itself and would set the standards for
running ESI hospitals. The Minister said that the Corporation
has taken up the modernisation of medical services across the
country on a war footing. He said that the ESIC is exploring possibility
of leasing out part of the surplus capacity in its hospitals to
private sector to meet the increasing expenditure on modernisation.
The Labour Secretary Shri Vinod Vaish said that Gurgaon with its
modern infra-structural facilities and proximity to the national
capital is bound to emerge as a very important industrial centre
in the near future with a sizable worker population. He said that
the hospital project would go a long way in meeting their health
care requirements. He further said that the Ministry is on a look
out for ways and means to extend the social protection to workers
in the informal sector and those working in small industry and
cottage industry etc.. Earlier in her welcome address Director
General, ESI Corporation Smt.Suman Swarup, stated that the objective
of setting up of model hospitals was to provide adequate secondary
patient care to the beneficiaries and thereby set a need based
trend for qualitative and quantitative improvements in the service
delivery system in ESI service outlets.
