Salary budget sought for SVIMS

Tirupati: The committee on health reforms headed by Chairperson K Sujatha Rao appointed by Government of Andhra Pradesh has visited Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS) on Tuesday.

The eight-member committee inspected various departments like OP, emergency medicine, MICU, RICU, cath lab, nuclear medicine and radiology. SVIMS Director-cum-Vice Chancellor Dr TS Ravikumar made a brief presentation to the committee and stressed the need for allocation of salary budget for the institute.

He outlined the progress made by the institute and initiatives of SVIMS to improve health care quality. Ravikumar highlighted three unique achievements: SVIMS only institution in AP and Telangana to be ranked in both categories of top 100 universities and top 30 medical institutions of India.

It displays quality/patient safety metrics voluntarily in public access website and it has the Real Time Actionable Patient Experience of Care (R-TAPE) portal. Other initiatives such as Pink Bus, community CPR programme, nephrology and neurosurgery programmes were also mentioned by him.

The SVIMS Director also remarked that SVIMS has been the only University in the country with no salary support and amongst the lowest grant in aid received of comparable universities and medical institutions in public sector. He pressed the need for Rs 50 crore salary grant by government of AP or SVIMS to be considered on par with BIRRD by TTD with full support.