A writ petition on cases of overcharging of cardiac stents by 38 private hospitals of the country is likely to be admitted next week in the Delhi High Court. The petitioner, advocate Birender Sangwan had earlier filed PILs against 18 hospitals at Delhi High Court for violation of ceiling prices fixed for coronary stents.

Government capped the prices of cardiac stents based on the conclusion that all cardiac stents are of the same quality eventually capping prices as per Schedule 1 of Drug Price Control Order (DPCO).

The move followed incorporating cardiac stents in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) subsequent to a series of meetings with the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) and cardiologists in 2015.

Further to this, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) through a notification on February 14, 2017 fixed ceiling prices of cardiac stents, which was a huge relief for 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 almost 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, state drug controllers across the country have also 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 in hospitals at Mumbai, Delhi, UP, Ahmedabad, Pune and Nashik.

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 also reported that in 200 to 300 cases of cardiac stent overcharging by way of not mentioning the stent price in the medical bill and billing it as angioplasty charges or cath lab charges and not mentioning brand name and company of the stents. The hospitals were also found to be not mentioning the batch number and expiry dates of the stents thus misleading the patients.