Andheri's Seven Hills refuses to budge as bed controversy deepens

Controversy surrounding Andheri’s Seven Hills hospital — the first super-speciality facility being developed under the public private partnership (PPP) model — refuses to die down.

Another round of wrangling is likely to resume between the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which owns the 17-acre plot on which the facility is coming up, and the hospital management.

The civic administration has been at loggerheads with the management for three months. The dispute arises largely out of disagreement over the number of beds to be reserved for poor patients and the rates to be charged from these patients for medicines, consumables and procedures.

The BMC is pressing for a 30% reservation of beds for such patients across all departments in the hospital. It also insists that medicine, consumable and procedure rates be on a par with those charged in BMC-run hospitals.

The hospital management is not keen on these. It insists that the agreement signed between the two parties for the plot on December 20, 2005, does not list these conditions. The BMC has also insisted that two of its members — the municipal commissioner and the director (medical education and public health) — be inducted as members of the hospital’s management committee.

The hospital, however, is keen on the representation of only one officer — an officer on special duty (OSD) — to oversee the implementation of the terms and conditions of the agreement.

After talks between the two sides failed to arrive at a consensus on these issues, municipal commissioner Swadhin Kshatriya made a statement in the civic general body on July 16, threatening action against the hospital if the BMC’s demands were not met.

The matter was even raised by political leaders in the general body and the state assembly.

This, however, has not changed the hospital management’s stand. On Thursday, it submitted a draft to the municipal commissioner’s office, where it stood firm on its stand that only those conditions as mentioned in the 2005 agreement be made binding on it. S Krishnamurthy, communication head, Seven Hills, said the hospital agreed to provide 20% reservation for BMC-referred patients across departments as mentioned in the agreement. He said it would not be possible for the hospital to charge for medicines, consumables, and procedures at BMC-prescribed rates.

He added that it wouldn’t be possible to appoint two BMC members on the hospital’s board of directors. “Eleven banking firms have lent Rs700 crore for the project based on the agreement’s framework. We cannot deviate from it.”