The Telegraph | Calcutta | Mar 16, 2018 00:00 IST
Calcutta: The regulatory commission for private health care is working on a plan to root out the “hidden charges” levied by many hospitals and nursing homes to allegedly inflate bills.
The commission has drawn up a list of charges that it feels private health care institutions “unethically” include in bills.
Charging extra for the service of resident medical officers in intensive care units, admission processing, nursing, laundry, delivery of medicines from the hospital pharmacy to the patient’s bed and oxygen in the ICU have been identified by the West Bengal Clinical Establishments Regulatory Commission as hidden costs that need to be curbed.
“We will ask various hospitals what are the expenses they incur on these that they charge patients additionally,” an official said.
The regulatory commission, set up by the Mamata Banerjee government last year, is collecting data from hospitals to arrive at a baseline. Mamata has said on several occasions that private hospitals should stop adding hidden costs to bills for medical treatment.
On March 7, the regulatory commission pointed out in its verdict on a complaint against Belle Vue Clinic that the hospital had charged the patient’s family for food consumed by the nursing staff who attended to the person and also for visits by the resident medical officers.
“We are of the opinion that this is totally undesirable and not at all justified. We further find that in addition to bed charges, the hospital authority also levied separate charges for the RMOs, who are admittedly on their payroll,” the commission said.
The hospital has since informed the commission that it no longer charges patients for nurses’ food and visits by the resident medical officers. “Since a circular was issued by the commission in this regard, we have stopped charging patients on these accounts,” said an official at Belle Vue.
The commission has closed the case.
But health commission officials said many other hospitals were still billing patients under heads that are not disclosed at the time of admission. In once such hospital, surgery charges are double if it takes place on a Sunday, sources said.
The cost is 1.5 times more if the surgery is done past midnight.
“Why should a patient be charged if the surgeon doesn’t find time during normal working hours?” a commission official said.
Some hospitals allegedly charge between Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 as “admission processing fee”.
“They also charge for laundry, sterilisation, maintenance of records and even processing insurance documents, which they only send to the third-party administrators that handle claims,” an official said.
There are also complaints about hospitals charging for oxygen supply in ICUs. “They can charge for oxygen in general wards but not in ICUs,” the official said.
A section of private hospitals charges extra even for a basic device like a syringe pump, which is used to regulate the amount of drug administered to a patient over a period of time.
All these charges put together inflate the ICU bill by 10 to 15 per cent, officials said.
Commission officials have found some hospitals charging more than the MRP (maximum retail price) of medicines supplied from their own pharmacies.
“All hidden costs should be done away with. There should only be a bed charge, including all these expenses. This will bring more transparency and help hospitals regain the trust of patients,” said Sudipta Mitra, chief executive of Peerless Hospital.
