Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: For thousands of elderly and critically ill patients dependent on the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS), the biggest risk is no longer just the disease—it is the delay in getting approval for treatment.A representation sent to Union health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda has flagged how life-saving procedures and drugs are getting stuck in a slow-moving approval system, forcing patients to wait 45 to 120 days—time many simply do not have.Under the current mechanism, even after a government specialist prescribes urgent treatment, cases involving high-cost or unlisted therapies must be cleared by a central Standing Technical Committee (STC) in Delhi. The process involves multiple layers of file movement and depends on meetings that may be held only once in months.For diseases like cancer, heart failure and advanced kidney disease, such delays can be decisive.“Treatment delayed is life denied. Patients are deteriorating while approvals are pending,” said T K Damodaran, general secretary of the CGHS Beneficiaries Welfare Association of India, which represents over 43 lakh beneficiaries, most of them senior citizens.The association has documented cases where critical treatment windows were missed. In liver cancer, nearly 23% of patients saw tumours become inoperable while waiting for approvals for ablation procedures. Lung cancer patients requiring immunotherapy recorded disease progression in over 40% of cases during the wait. Heart failure patients needing advanced devices faced delays stretching beyond three months, with deaths reported while files remained pending.Doctors say such delays undermine clinical judgment. “These treatments are time-bound. If intervention is delayed, outcomes worsen significantly,” said a senior government hospital specialist.Efforts to contact the CGHS director for comments elicited no response. He neither answered calls nor responded to the queries sent on his WhatsApp.The issue raises serious legal concerns. In Parmanand Katara v. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that preservation of life is paramount. In Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity v. State of West Bengal, it ruled that failure to provide timely treatment violates the right to life under Article 21.Despite advances in digital health systems, approvals remain centralised, with decisions for patients across the country taken by a Delhi-based panel. Health policy experts say this creates inequity and turns a patient’s right to treatment into a prolonged administrative process.The association has urged urgent reforms, including decentralising approval powers, fixing strict timelines, and introducing deemed approvals if decisions are not taken within days. It has also sought automatic clearance for elderly patients and emergency provisions for life-saving care.With India pushing for faster, technology-driven healthcare delivery, the gap between medical urgency and administrative response is becoming harder to ignore.“The doctor prescribes immediately. The system responds months later,” Damodaran said.
