THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The members of the high-level expert group constituted by the government to evaluate the rates of various complicated surgical procedures, including organ transplant, will submit a detailed report on their respective sectors by the month-end. The panel comprises organ transplant experts, cardiac surgeons, nephrologists, surgery professors, cardiologists and hospital administrators.
The terms of reference of the panel were also finalised at the maiden meeting. As part of the exercise, the expert group will examine the rates for organ transplantation, including kidney transplant, from both live and brain dead donors, liver transplantation, in-vitro fertilisation, cardiac surgeries, angioplasty, stenting and various other surgical procedures in the pubic and private sectors.
The idea is to get the base rates of each procedure in the public and private institutions.
Experts say while getting base rates in government hospitals is easy, the problem is with evaluating the rates in different private institutions. “It will be an exhaustive exercise to get the rates of different category hospitals and then coming to a standardised rate for each procedure. Perhaps the entire exercise will take about two months,” said a doctor. Experts say organ transplant surgery being a complicated procedure, the cost of transplantation could go much beyond the base rate depending on the needs of the patients.
