Hospitals charged insured patients 2-3 times higher

Majority admissions of same category as it gives free hand to inflate bills, observes panel

Amit Bathla

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, June 25

As the price capping order for Covid treatment doesn’t apply to insured patients, private hospitals in the district raised bills of their treatment from two to three times higher than the package rates prescribed by the Haryana Government.

Further, in violation of 60 per cent reservation of beds for uninsured patients, the hospitals gave admissions to a majority of patients covered under health insurance just to evade the last year’s instructions from the state government that restricted them from superfluous and indiscriminate charging in Covid bills, the district-level Covid bills monitoring committee observed.

It was because the capping order had clearly specified that for fully insured patients, hospitals can charge insurance policy rates.

‘’A close analysis suggests that only 30 to 35 uninsured patients were allowed for treatment in private hospitals when the Covid was at its peak. More admissions from insurance category gives hospitals a free hand to overcharge patients,” said a panel member.

‘’As per package rates, the daily charges should be around Rs 20,000-22,000 but in many cases, it is as high as Rs 65,000 per day,’’ said BB Singhal, member, Haryana State Pharmacy Council, and member of district-level Covid bill monitoring committee.

He said the hospitals added ‘’superficial’’ charges in Covid bills to fleece patients.

‘’Tests and medical examinations were conducted repeatedly, in some cases even every day, against the protocol just to inflate bills,” he said.

Fixed target

‘’We further observed that irrespective of severity of the illness, the hospitals had fixed a daily target of charging a certain amount from patients,’’ Singhal added.

Patient’s kin charged Rs 14.5 lakh

Pardeep Sood, a resident of Sector 15 whose father expired while receiving treatment at Paras Hospital, said he had to shell out Rs 14.5 lakh from his pocket for his 30-day stay at the hospital from November 30 to December 30.

‘’The hospital had raised a bill of Rs 18.5 lakh, of which Rs 3 lakh was claimed through insurance. Further, Rs 1 lakh was reduced after intervention from the insurer. But at last, we had to pay Rs 14.5 lakh,” he said.

In this particular case, the average daily charges settled at Rs 61,000 per day.

According to officials, the final bill of late Jagdish Chand Sood mentioned at least 27 chest X-ray were conducted during his 30-day stay in the hospital.

‘’If we go by the bill, the patient had been exposed to X-ray machine almost on a daily basis,’’ they added.