A month after the prices of coronary stents were capped by the national Pharmaceutical pricing authority, the government body is still getting complaints on overpricing of such stents from different consumers.

Bhupinder Singh, the Chairman of NPPA told Outlook today that since the prices were fixed on 14th Feb this year, he has received more than 12 complaints from across the country on overpricing of stents by big hospitals.

Outlook earlier reported that hospitals and device manufacturers had withdrawn high end stents from shelves, creating artificial shortage of supply of stents available to patients. While this problem has now been resolved, several issues still remain in terms of amounts charged for stents and separate billings for such procedures as under the price control order.

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Singh says that the NPPA has received several bills showing exaggerated costs of procedures as well. While the cost of medical procedures and its regulations does not fall under the ambit of control of the Pricing authority, it has been noted that several hospitals may be charging patients amounts which are much higher to compensate for the capping on stent prices.

Singh mentioned that to further ensure that stent prices are monitored and hospitals do not charge amounts higher than directed by the authority, an Order was uploaded on the NPPA website directing all hospitals to display prices of all stents available to them on their official websites. “This will help the NPPA ensure that patients are getting fair prices for stents since it becomes difficult to monitor the functioning of each hospital individually,” says Singh.

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In addition to this, he also said that the NPPA has put in measures in place to control prices on every level of the supply chain from manufacturing companies, distributors as well as hospitals through on ground officials.

He also hinted to bringing into place a uniform policy for price control for all medical devices. “14 devices have already been brought under the drugs and cosmetics act. We are working in the direction of brining other medical devices under price control as well,” he said.

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