Bengaluru: Overcharged Covid-19 patients get money back

Over 20 Covid-19 patients who were improperly charged an advance total of Rs 24.8 lakh by a private hospital for treatment were reimbursed on Monday.

In a tweet, D Roopa Moudgil, IPS, who, along with other members of a hospital supervisory team operating in the RR Nagar zone, had uncovered the payments, revealed that 21 patients out of the 22 have now been reimbursed. One person had not paid an advance.

All of the patients had been referred to the hospital under the auspices of the Suvarna Arogya Suraksha Trust (SAST), which meant the final bill would be picked up by the government. “The patients, being referred by the government, should not have been asked for an advance by the hospital,” explained Roopa.

According to documents shared by the IPS officer, the hospital, SSNMC Super Speciality Hospital in RR Nagar, was also revealed to have inflated the daily care bills of the patients that would be paid by the SAST.

“At the end of treatment, the final bill, without our intervention, would have come to Rs 4-5 lakh per patient,” Roopa said.

Although the seven supervisory teams have a mandate to ensure that private hospitals earmark 50% of their bed strength for Covid services, Roopa said she and other members of her team, including IAS officer Harsh Gupta, Ashok Gowda (BWSSB) and Sandhya Arun, an Arogya Mitra nodal officer, caught wind of the improper payments after speaking to the patients.

Dr Guru Prasad, Chief Marketing Officer of Sparsh Hospital, which oversees SSNMC, had told DH earlier that some of the patients had made demands for additional services such as special wards and medication, and that is why they had been charged.

According to the documents, 14 patients had been placed in a semi-special ward, four in the ICU and another four in the special ward.

Eight of the patients are still under treatment at the hospital.