Maha: Campaign against pvt hospitals that overcharged during pandemic

A group of activists and NGOsworking in the field of health care on Friday said a 15-daylong sensitisation campaign would be launched acrossMaharashtra against the private hospitals that overchargedCOVID-19 patients and thereby flouted the government orders.

The campaign named 'Jan Aarogya Abhiyan' would beginfrom next week, they said.

''The idea is to mount a pressure on the stateauthorities over the gross violation of government orders andregulations while treating COVID-19 patients in the last oneyear,'' public health specialist Dr Abhay Shukla said.

''Our campaign will start from next week and will go onfor 15 days. It will also have a social media campaign,wherein we will tag the social media handles of state healthminister as well as other stake holders in this field,'' hesaid.

As part of the campaign, a database of people, whosuffered due to the overcharging private hospitals during thepandemic, is being compiled.

''We held a video conference with some people who losttheir relatives due to COVID-19 and who complained of beingovercharged by the local private hospitals,'' he said.

Shukla said that during the campaign, such cases wouldbe highlighted to sensitise people about their health carerights.

''We want to mount pressure on the state to take somestrict action against those indulging in such malpractices,''he added.

Girish Bhave, another activist of the campaign said,''We need to have a state-specific Clinical Establishment Act,which would control the rates in private hospitals...It isimperative to have such a regulatory act as we heard severalcases today itself, wherein some patients were chargedexorbitantly and the dead body of the relative was not handedover over non-payment of the bill.'' ''In one of the incidents, a person was forced to payRs 16,000 for the transportation of his relative's body fromthe hospital for crematorium, which was just two kms away.

Unfortunately, there has been no action against suchmalpractices,'' he said.

Co-convenor of the Abhiyan Shakuntala Bhalerao saidseven key measures must now be included in legal regulation ofprivate hospitals: display of rates, standardisation of rateswith capping to prevent overcharging, implementation of theNational Human Rights Commission's (NHRC) charter of patients'rights, ensuring standard treatment protocols, patient-friendly grievance redressal mechanism, multi-stakeholderbodies at district and state levels to oversee regulation, andadequately staffed regulatory infrastructure.