In spite of setting tight norms over pricing of stents, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has received complaints from patients across India on overpricing of cardiac stents. Shockingly, the list of 24 hospitals as released by NPPA include public hospitals like King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai and Post Graduate Institute (PGI), Chandigarh.
In spite of setting tight norms over pricing of stents, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has received complaints from patients across India on overpricing of cardiac stents. Shockingly, the list of 24 hospitals as released by NPPA include public hospitals like King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai and Post Graduate Institute (PGI), Chandigarh.
After the notification issued by NPPA on February 13, that ceiling prices of drug eluting stents (DES) and bioresorbable vascular scaffolds (BVS) will be fixed at Rs 29,600 and bare metal stents (BMS) at Rs 7,260, it had appealed to patients to register complaints on its helpline in case of overcharging by hospitals or suppliers.
"Each day we have received close to 60-70 phone calls but these are more of those to get clarity on new rules. We collated complaints against 24 hospitals in the past two weeks," said a senior NPPA official.
Other hospitals include private ones in New Delhi like Max Hospital in Saket, Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai as well as nursing homes and hospitals in Ambala, Meerut, Faridadabad, Jalandhar and Hyderabad.
All the hospitals under scanner have been issued notices to verify overpricing complaints and are expected to reply within a week. "After due checks, a demand notice to recover overpricing money will be issued to the hospitals by NPPA," said Bhupendra Singh, director, NPPA.
NPPA Helpline
In case a hospital is overcharging for stents, you can complain to NPPA on 1800111255.
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