PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court has given a month time to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and KP Health Care Commission (HCC) for making changes in the relevant law to empower the commission for fixation of rates of laboratories, hospitals and private clinics.

A bench consisting of Justice Fazal Subhan and Justice Farah Jamshed directed the respondents to submit a report in this regard. `Since the judgement in this case has been passed in 2019, therefore, the respondents are directed to expedite the process of amendment in the Act and to submit a report within one month, positively,` the bench ordered.

The bench was hearing a contempt plea filed by Advocate Saifullah MuhibKakakhel, requesting the court to take action against the respondents including HCC chief executive for non-compliance of a judgement of the court delivered in 2019.

The petitioner claimed that the commission had not been implementing the court`s judgement about fixation of rates for laboratories, hospitals and private clinics. Next date of hearing will be fixed later.

The respondents in the contempt petition are HCC chief executive officer, provincial health secretary and director general health services.

Few months ago, the respondents had submitted comments in the case stating that in 2022 the commission had made recommendations for fixation of rates of different categories of laboratories, hospitals and clinics but due to non-availability of cabinet approval the same couldn`t be implemented. It was added that the matter would now be placed before the present provincial cabinet for approval.

The commission had claimed that it lacked legal authority under section 6 of KP Health Care Commission Act to fix rates. It had stated that they had drafteda bill in 2022 for making amendments in the law so as to authorise the commission to regulate rates of hospitals, laboratories and clinics, but that had still been pending.

Advocate Mehwish Muhib Kakakhel appeared for the petitioner and argued that despite clear directives and even contempt proceedings, the authorities failed to standardise healthcare fees as ordered.

She stated that a bench headed by the then chief justice of PHC Waqar Ahmad Seth had decided in 2019 the main petition filed by the petitioner in 2017 and had given three-month time to the respondents to fix the rates of health facilities including laboratories in consultation with health department.

The counsel said that the case`s timeline showed repeated delays on part of respondents.She statedthatin 2020,the contempt petition was filed and high court had given 90 more days to respondents to implement the judgement, but in vain.

She stated that every laboratory had its own rates and there was no check and balance by HCC so they were looting people.Ms Kakakhel said that earlier uniform rates for dengue, MP and complete blood count tests were fixed by HCC by issuing a public notice over a petition popularly known as dengue virus case.

She said that the act was highly beneficial for people, who couldn`t afford treatment, tests and medicines.

She said that court in its judgement had ordered that HCC was not made merely to issue licence but also to regulate rates and all other work related to regulation of public and private health sector for benefit of people.

`No doubt, charges of doctors and laboratories depend on expenses, staff, location and equipment used but for this reason, they cannot be left to charge people unbridled fee,` the high court had ruled in its earlier judgement.

`For this purpose, health department and Health Care Commission, both are heavily responsible to provide a mechanism to bring uniformity in the fee structure and standards of health services in public and private sector healthcare establishments and stop healthcare service providers from charging exaggerated fee from general public,` the bench had ruled.