Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to start Investigation Revolving Fund (IRF) on the pattern of Hospital Revolving Fund (HRF).
This will help state-run medical colleges/hospitals to provide diagnostic facilities at cheaper rates, just as medicines are being provided via in-house medical stores. The Uttar Pradesh Budget has made a provision of Rs 12 crore for IRF. HRF provides medicines at up to 60 per cent discount and is currently operational at institutes such as King George's Medical University, SGPGIMS and Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences. HRF and IRF are different from facilities run on private-public-partnership (PPP).
A revolving fund is like a corpus fund and remains available to finance an organisation's operations, including medicines, without any fiscal year limitation, as the organisation replenishes the fund by repaying money used from the account.
Dr Abhishek Shukla, secretary general, Association of International Doctors, said, "IRF aims to have sufficient funds for procurement of lab consumables to conduct tests and investigation for patients in different departments. It ensures cost-effective functioning of laboratories." Health establishments, which will run IRF, will first generate a corpus fund, purchase consumables and conduct tests for patients.
The money obtained from patients against the tests will then be used to purchase consumables. This way, the corpus will remain with the health facility and tests will be done at cheaper rates, as compared to private labs. Under the IRF, there will be an agreement with manufacturers of laboratory equipment and consumables for supply of the same at discounted rates. —IANS