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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Stents can still make a killing -GS Mudur

Stents can still make a killing -GS Mudur

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published Published on May 1, 2017   modified Modified on May 2, 2017
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: The government's price cap on coronary stents has not deterred the health-care industry from continuing to offer hospitals profit opportunities of tens of thousands of rupees on other kinds of stents, concerned doctors and health-care industry representatives said.
 
stents
 
The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), the government's price regulator, had on February 15 imposed a cap of about Rs 30,000 on coronary stents. But hospitals can continue to profit from stents used in various other medical procedures.

Documents made available to The Telegraph by physicians who say they are concerned by these trends suggest that medical device distributors are offering hospitals other stents at prices significantly lower than their maximum retail prices (MRP).

These documents, the doctors say, appear to support claims by patients' rights advocates that MRPs are inflated to allow profits along the distribution chain and claims by coronary stent-makers that hospitals do not always pass on price reductions to patients.

One set of documents contains quotations received by a leading hospital on April 28 that offer a specific carotid stent, a device used to facilitate blood flow in arteries that feed the brain, at a "hospital rate" of Rs 52,500 against an MRP of Rs 69,000. Another device is offered at a hospital rate of Rs 55,000 against an MRP of Rs 90,000.

Another set of documents from a different distributor listing oesophageal stents and biliary stents - used during surgical procedures involving the gastrointestinal tract - also shows differences between hospital prices and MRPs.

"This is the industry practice nationwide," the signatory to one of the documents told this newspaper.

Hospitals procure medical devices from distributors who buy them from the manufacturers. Distributors usually make anywhere between 5 per cent and 20 per cent over the price they receive from manufacturing companies, said the signatory who is an executive with a distributor.

"The MRPs are set by respective manufacturers," another executive with a different distributor said.

The executive said the margins for the distributors varied from hospital to hospital. "Some hospitals I know don't charge extra for the patients," the executive said.

A senior physician familiar with the industry practice said the differences between the hospital prices and the MRPs allowed hospitals to "play with the prices" offered to patients.

A device procured for Rs 55,000 against an MRP of Rs 90,000 allows a hospital to play with Rs 35,000 - the hospital may choose to make no profit at all, pricing it at the hospital rate, or make the full profit of Rs 35,000.

Sections of the health-care industry say that hospitals at times use these margins to make up for the capital investments they have made in setting up the surgical theatres and equipment to deliver stents.

But some doctors reject this argument. "That is like justifying a robbery because you have high expenses," said Gurinder Singh Grewal, a consultant physician in Ludhiana, Punjab, and former president of the Punjab Medical Council, who has been campaigning for ethical practices in medicine.

Please click here to read more.
 

The Telegraph, 30 April, 2017, https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170501/jsp/frontpage/story_149217.jsp#.WQaXctzhXIU


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