Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday formally launched a scheme that facilitates free surgeries at private hospitals, which will be sponsored by the Delhi government, if the waiting period at its hospitals is long.

According to the scheme, if the waiting period for 52 surgeries — heart bypass, cataract and kidney stones removal,etc—listed by the government is more than one month, patients would be eligible to get it done at 48 empanelled hospitals.

People from all income groups can avail of benefits of this scheme: the only eligibility criteria would be that the patient must be a Delhi resident undergoing treatment at a government hospital.

“We need a healthcare system where tests can be done within hospitals and surgeries could be done within a month. Till the time such infrastructure comes up, schemes like these are necessary,” Kejriwal said.

“Some people need to get the tests or surgeries immediately, but sometimes in our hospitals now these get delayed because of waiting lists. The doctors are emotionally burdened when they have to say this to the patient. This step will relieve the doctors this burden,” said deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.

He assured that there will be no shortage of funds from the finance department for this scheme.

The chief minister said that this was the third in the series of healthcare initiatives by the Delhi government, after providing free medicines and free medical tests at private diagnostic centres.

The government has tied up with 21 private laboratories to provide 13 expensive medical tests including CT scan and MRI to anyone coming to Delhi government hospitals, without income restrictions.