Nellore: Responding to complaints by scores of cardiac patients fleeced by hospitals involved in cardiac surgeries, the Union government has fixed the maximum retail price of bare metal stents (BMS) and drug eluting stents (DES) at Rs 7,623 and Rs 31,080, respectively, inclusive of VAT and other local taxes. This was done in an extraordinary gazette notification dated February 13, 2017.
All such hospitals across the state have been asked to prominently display the cost of the stents available with them in their institutions henceforth. The Drug Control wing has been entrusted with the job of implementing the new rule and keep tabs on these hospitals to protect the interests of the patients. As per the notification, every retailer and dealer should display a price list and supplementary price list, if any, as furnished by the manufacturer/importer, on a conspicuous part of the premises where he conducts business in a manner so as to be easily accessible to any person wishing to consult this list.
Similarly, hospitals/ nursing homes/clinics performing cardiac procedures using coronary stents will now have to display the rate prominently and also specifically and separately mention the cost of the coronary stents along with its brand name, name of the manufacturer/importer/batch no. and other details in their billing to the patients. All these decisions, including the ceiling on the price of stents, were taken during the 40th authority meeting of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority held on January 23.
During the deliberations, NPPA found that huge, unethical mark-ups were being charged at each stage in the supply chain of coronary stents, resulting in excessive, restrictive and exorbitant prices in a failed market system driven by information asymmetry between the patients and doctors. Result: patients were being pushed to financial misery. Assistant Director of Drug Control Department B. Suresh Babu said that hospitals have been told to return the old stock of stents priced anywhere between Rs 70,000 to Rs 1,50,000 to the manufacturers for revising the price of all such stents, not exceeding the ceiling price specified.
He informed that Rs 40 lakh worth of stents have been returned to the manufacturers from the hospitals involved in cardiac surgery in Nellore. They include: Apollo, KIMS (Bollineni), AIMS (Anasuya Institute of Medical Sciences), Narayana and Simhapuri hospitals. He said they have ensured availability of stents with a reduced price at all the hospitals. Speaking to this newspaper, Mr Suresh Babu appealed to the public to contact their landline (No 0861-2331755) if any hospital charged them more than the price specified for coronary stents. He said they would file cases under the drug price control act against the hospitals violating the price fixed by the NPPA.
