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Centre implements BMMP to improve diagnostics services in public health facilities
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Ramesh Shankar, Mumbai
December 30 , 2016
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The Union health ministry has undertaken a massive Biomedical Equipment
Management and Maintenance Program (BMMP) to improve diagnostic services
in health facilities across the country, thereby reducing cost of care
and improving the quality of care in public health facilities. Under the
programme, support is being provided by the Union health ministry to
the state governments to outsource medical equipment maintenance
comprehensively for all the equipment across all the healthcare
facilities.
According to sources, the programme was implemented
on the directive from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Taking serious note
of the observations made by the Prime Minister on equipments in various
hospitals that are either unused or there is no maintenance resulting in
wastage of resources, Union health minister J P Nadda directed the
officials of the ministry to address this and devise appropriate
mechanisms to ensure that medical equipment already purchased are
properly maintained beyond their guarantee period.
On the
instructions of the health minister, a massive exercise to map the
inventory of all bio-medical equipment was undertaken, including their
functionality status. The mapping was successfully completed in 29
states resulting in 7,56,750 numbers of equipment in 29,115 health
facilities costing approximately Rs. 4564
crores being identified. It was also noted that equipment in range of 13
per cent to 34 per cent was found to be dysfunctional across states.
Cost of dysfunctional equipment is Rs. 1015.74 crore.
The
ministry also prepared comprehensive guidelines along with RFP on BMMP,
linked with uptime of equipment. Under BMMP, support is being provided
to the state governments to outsource medical equipment maintenance
comprehensively for all the equipment across all the facilities.
Subsequent to inventory mapping, RFPs/tenders were rolled out to award
maintenance contract forthe respective states.
A total of eleven
states namely 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
programme implementation stage. Five states namely Uttar Pradesh, West
Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Gujarat have released the RFP and are
in the process of finalizing the tenders. Other states are yet to issue
the RFP. For 12 states where work orders have been issued, the
dysfunctional equipment costing Rs. 378.11 crore became functional in 4 months of work order.
There
has been a reduction in dysfunctionality rate of about 25 per cent with
downtime of 3-4 months to about 5 per cent with maximum downtime of 7
days.
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