Nagpur: Action urged against hosps overcharging patients

NAGPUR: Market rate of each PPE kit is a maximum of Rs 500, while private hospitals are charging between Rs 1,300 to Rs 3,360.
Hospitals are charging Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000 per day from patients towards medicines with compulsion to purchase it from the same hospitals’ internal medical store.
Against the rules, private hospitals are refusing admission if the relatives fail to deposit required sum with them.
Members of Nagpur Citizens Forum (NCF) flagged such acts by private hospitals to municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B demanding action against hospitals for disobeying the government diktat on admitting and treating Covid-19 patients.
Forum members Abhijeet Jha, Abhijeet Chandel, Amit Bandurkar, Gajendra Singh Lohiya, Vaibhav Shinde-Patil and Prof CS Vikas Suresh Chedge submitted a memorandum to the civic chief.
“As per government rules, 80% beds in private hospitals should be made available for Covid-19 patients at government stipulated rates. But there is no mechanism provided by the NMC to categorize the 80-20% beds as per scheme,” it said. There are no hoardings or wide publicity of government rules, regulations and facilities at hospitals, it added.
According to the Forum members, despite clear directives from state health minister Rajesh Tope that depositing money beforehand should not be compulsory at the time of admission of any Covid-19 patient, the hospitals were brazenly doing so. “There are so many examples where patients have died due to lack of advance amount at the time of admission,” they alleged.
NMC has also failed to take any coercive step to prevent hospitals from levying excess charges towards medicines.
The demands of the forum included prompt action against hospitals overcharging from patients, making hospitals notify 80:20 beds on a dashboard, notify there is no compulsion to pay advance during admission, allow purchase of medicines from outside stores and widespread publicity of names and availability of pre-auditors.
It also appealed to the NMC to create awareness about the facilities available at all government and NMC-run hospitals.