21 of 22 overcharged Covid-19 patients reimbursed

Team Udayavani, Jul 28, 2020, 11:29 AM IST

Bengaluru: IPS officer D Roopa Moudgil, who happens to be part of a hospital supervisory team informed that 21 of 22 Covid-19 patients who had been overcharged for their treatment were reimbursed on Monday.

The private hospital had collected advance from the patients though they were referred under the auspices of the Suvarna Arogya Suraksha Trust (SAST), which meant that the government would settle their final bill.

The amount so collected by the hospital from these patients amounted to Rs 24.8 lakh.

“21 patients out of the 22 have now been reimbursed. One person had not paid an advance,” Moudgil said in a tweet.

As per the findings of the team, the hospital inflated the daily care bills of the patients. “If not for our intervention the final bill, at the end of treatment, would have come to Rs 4-5 lakh per patient,” Roopa said.

The supervisory team comprising of IAS officer Harsh Gupta, Ashok Gowda (BWSSB) and Sandhya Arun, an Arogya Mitra nodal officer among others came to know of the inflated bills after speaking to the patients.

Meanwhile a doctor at the hospital had claimed that few of the patients had made demands for additional services such as special wards and medication, and that is why they had been charged.