PESHAWAR: The health department has started categorisation of the empanelled hospitals offering free treatment under Sehat Card Plus (SCP) scheme to offer rates to them on the basis of the quality of their services being provided to patients.

“The categorisation of health facilities will give us an idea about their infrastructure including availability of doctors, equipment, human resources and other facilities there on the basis of which they would be offered rates for different operations, admissions and surgical procedures,” Dr Amir Rafiq, the director empanelment of SCP, told Dawn.

He said that so far they had empanelled a total of 1,115 hospitals including 861 private and 254 public health facilities across the country where 1.57 million families of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and newly-merged districts were entitled to seek free treatment.

Of these, 203 including 149 private and 54 public sector hospitals are located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 912 in other provinces where the people having the Computerised National Identity Cards of the province are eligible to avail treatment up to Rs1 million per year.