First person accounts of private hospitals fleecing patients for Covid-19 treatment continue to flood social media. While more than a dozen state governments have instituted policies to regulate charges for Covid-19 treatment in private hospitals, the implementation leaves much to be desired.
A writ petition has been filed seeking directions from the Supreme Court on the regularisation of treatment tariff. The All India Drug Action Network is an impleader in the case.
Malini Aisola of AIDAN spoke to Scroll.in about the challenges of regulating private healthcare, the influence of lobbies on policy making and your rights as a patient.
The limited efforts by state governments at price regulation and capping are reportedly being sidestepped by corporate hospitals. Take us through what AIDAN’s analysis of bills from corporate hospitals in three metropolitan cities shows.
Even prior to the pandemic, overbilling in private hospitals has been a commonly accepted phenomenon. In fact, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority had documented the trend of profiteering by private hospitals in respect of more than 1,700% margins on drugs and consumables.
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Unfortunately, not only has this trend continued into the Covid-19 pandemic, but there is also evidence to suggest that overcharging may have intensified with private hospitals treating the pandemic as open sanction to loot patients.
In the absence of billing transparency, hospitals are just able to freely inflate charges. Some hospitals have levied charges of Rs. 10,000-15,000 per day for just PPE, without providing any breakdown of quantity or price. Even though the costs of PPE should be shared across multiple patients admitted in the same ward, patients are being billed for the same PPE individually.
A number of arbitrary charges have also appeared in bills such as RMO [Resident Medical Officer] charges, biomedical waste disposal, admission charges, medical history assessment charges, equipment use charges, universal precaution charges and even parking charges.
We have also observed disturbing conduct on the part of private hospitals which have since the beginning of the pandemic, been rampantly administered a variety of experimental treatments – favipiravir, HCQ, tocilizumab, lopinavir+ritonavir, remdesivir, etc – without taking informed consent of the patient.
Source: Scroll
