Delhi’s Health Minister Stayendar Kumar Jain stated, “Several doctors are working on non-clinical assignments for which the core work of the health department — attending to patients — is getting affected. Furthermore, they are not trained to deal with procurement, maintenance and distribution of consumables and medical instruments.” The government would look to add on experts in areas like – IT, managers, supply chain & logistics to ensure better supply of medicines, consumables and medical instruments.

The observation was that 89% of specialist doctors were deployed for distribution of medicines in 36 hospitals across Delhi, besides hundres of pharmacists, nurses and compounders. The government wanted doctors to focus solely on patient care. Registration process for DHC has been completed and it will start work in two months time. All future health projects related to non-clincal areas of the health department will be handled by DHC.

The DHC will be an autonomous government owned body headed by a Chairperson. CEOs will be set up to head various departments as well. The Central Procurement Agency which handles centralised procurement of medicines will also be merged with the DHC. The Health Department looks to reduse present expenditure of around Rs 600 crores in medicines by entering competitive bidding in the open market for bulk purchase

The new system would allow hospitals of the city to place weekly orders online to DHC and DHC would ensure timely supply to these hospitals. Jain has also informed the Delhi government that it would buy 100 X-Ray machines via its centralised system.

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