Telangana: No fee cap in private hospitals for insured Covid-19 patients

Hyderabad: The Telangana health department on Sunday reiterated that private hospitals treating Covid-19 cases do not have to adhere to the ceiling on what they can charge patients as long as such patients have some kind of insurance.

In a press release, the Director of Public Health reiterated: “The rates are not applicable to patients subscribing (to) insurance schemes as well as patients being treated under various agreements/MoUs entered into by the hospitals and different sponsored groups or corporate entities.”

This provision was introduced in a government order issued on July 6 on the subject of fixing Covid-19 treatment rates at private hospitals. The order was issued making amendments to a previous government order issued on the same subject on June 15.

The director of health said these orders make it clear as to what the patients can be charged by private hospitals. In the June 15 order, the government capped the daily charges for ‘routine ward + isolation’ at Rs 4,000, ‘ICU without ventilator + isolation’ at Rs 7,500, and ‘ICU with ventilator + isolation’ at Rs 9,000.

These charges were to include routine investigations such as X-rays, blood tests and so on, as well as drugs, along with consultations.

What was excluded from the caps were several interventional procedures such as CT and MRI scans and the Covid-19 testing charges.

In the second order issued on July 6, the government said it was excluding ‘high-end drugs like immunoglobins, Meropenem, Tocilizumab, etc., along with parenteral nutrition’ which were originally included by using the word ‘drugs’ in the June 15 orders. All of these, it said in its July 6 amended order, could be charged at the maximum retail price.