At least 140 patients who had complained about high payments for Covid-19 and mucormycosis treatment by private hospitals in pune, have received a one-crore refund according to the civic authorities.
After the civic council issued notices to the hospitals, patients who made complaints were repaid the money. Patients who received Covid therapy had their expenses audited by the administration as well. The bills were scrutinised to ensure that private hospitals followed the state government’s price cap.
“As of March 28, we were able to retrieve 1 crore and reimburse 142 Covid-19 patients,” stated Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) assistant health officer. We’ve been following up on this since the second wave, when the demand for beds was really high. We also notified a number of private hospitals. We also issued show cause notifications when these hospitals failed to react. We sent out a notification first, then a reminder letter, and finally a final notice. The additional commissioner signed the last show cause letter, which stated, “If they do not answer, we may suspend their licence for six months, as we did previously in the case of a hospital during the lockdown.”
“These hospitals charged 5.95 crore in bills to Covid-19 patients, out of which the bill should have been 4.95 crore under the state government’s price cap, and therefore we were able to reimburse 1 crore to these patients,” it added.
