HC asks govt to cap cost of Covid treatment at pvt facilities in Delhi

The court said that the government can have different slabs based on services offered so that there is transparency.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday directed the Delhi government to cap prices for treatment of Covid-19 patients at private hospitals and nursing homes in the city, saying the administration cannot turn a blind eye to overcharging by hospitals merely because there were no complaints.

The court also questioned the state government for not making over 1,000-bed Indira Gandhi Hospital in Dwarka fully operational till date.(PTI)

“We want this taken up on top priority,” a bench of justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli said, and directed the health secretary, Delhi government, to convene a meeting with the administration of several hospitals and decide on the rationalisation of the charges. The bench asked the Delhi government to issue appropriate orders after the meeting.

“Merely because there were no complaints, the situation on the ground cannot be ignored. We agree [with the petitioner] that you cannot turn a blind eye to it. We had asked you to again speak to all stakeholders. That exercise should have been done. You could have seen the condition on the ground, spoken to all the stakeholders and then arrived at a reasonable figure so that people are not fleeced,” the bench said.

The directions came after the lawyer, Abhay Gupta, representing one of the intervenors in the main petition by Rakesh Malhotra, raised the issue of alleged overcharging by private hospitals. Gupta placed on record a hospital bill in which the ICU package price was ₹30,000, but the charges for bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) machine, oxygen, monitors, etc, were additional and to the tune of thousands of rupees per day.

The court said that the government can have different slabs based on services offered so that there is transparency.

“There should be some transparency. It shouldn’t be like someone is charging a lakh or someone’s charging ₹50,000,” the bench said.

Senior advocate and amicus curiae Rajshekhar Rao told the court that, according to his research, several private hospitals were refusing to admit patients even if they had cashless insurance cover, unless they deposited ₹50,000.

The court also questioned the state government for not making over 1,000-bed Indira Gandhi Hospital in Dwarka fully operational till date.

Justices Sanghi and Palli said the Delhi government should learn from the “bitter experiences” it had during the current infection wave. “If a third wave comes, as many experts are warning it might, and your facility is not up and running (to full capacity), then again we would be back to this situation,” the bench said after senior advocate Rahul Mehra, for Delhi government, said completion of the hospital was not a pressing issue as around 4,500 beds were currently available in the national capital.

“Though the situation may have somewhat improved with regard to availability of Covid beds, one cannot forget the situation that existed till just a couple of days ago when serious patients in need of hospitalisation with oxygen support, those requiring ICU with ventilators, were not able to get admission and many of them died without getting any chance to get treated appropriately,” the court noted in its oral order.

Advocate YP Singh for the petitioner, Dwarka Bar Association, told the court that 80 beds were operational in the Indira Gandhi Hospital, and only eight were occupied.