Thirty eight private hospitals figure in the new writ petition to be admitted at the Delhi High Court for violation of ceiling prices fixed for coronary stents. The petition is expected to be filed in the first week of July 2017. The petitioner, advocate Birender Sangwan had earlier filed PILs against 18 hospitals at Delhi High Court (HC) for overcharging cardiac stents.

National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) had through a notification on February 14, 2017 fixed ceiling prices of cardiac stents. Government after a series of meetings with the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) and cardiologists in 2015 came out with the conclusion that all cardiac stents are of the same quality and accordingly capped the price as per Schedule 1 of Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) after incorporating in the national list of essential medicines (NLEM).

Following which Advocate Birender Sangwan’s PIL led to slashing of prices of cardiac stents this year in February. This was a huge relief for many cardiac patients across the country as the ceiling price of bare metal stents was brought down to Rs. 7,260 from Rs. 45,000 and that of drug eluting stents were fixed at Rs. 29,600 from about a whopping Rs. 1.2 lakh.

The step was taken to fix a standardised specification of stent and its MRP to stop fleecing of patients. NPPA had written to all the chief secretaries to ensure compliance of stent price capping, its availability and uninterrupted cardiac care services.

Meanwhile, the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after a series of audits in Mumbai, Pune and Nashik, as directed by drug pricing regulator NPPA, has stepped up audits as part of its larger plan to detect overpricing of stents in government and private hospitals subsequent to NPPA receiving complaints about stents being sold at higher prices at KEM Hospital, Lilavati Hospital and a few hospitals in Pune and Nashik.

Many of these cases of overcharging have, however, also been referred by the NPPA to respective state drug controllers for audit and follow-up. The list includes leading government and private hospitals in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune.

NPPA has directed hospitals/nursing homes/clinics utilizing coronary stents shall specifically and separately mention the cost of the coronary stent along with its brand name, name of the manufacturer/importer/batch number and other details, if any, in their billing to the patients or their representatives.

NPPA had earlier observed that in 200 to 300 cases of cardiac stent overcharging, violations were in the form of not mentioning the stent price in the medical bill and billing it as angioplasty charges or cath lab charges, not mentioning brand name and company of the stents in the medical bills and also not mentioning clearly also the batch number and expiry dates of the stents thus misleading the patients and fleecing the patients in a major way.