NPPA said a strong action will be taken against 40 hospitals that are not showing new decreased price list for knee implant. In the released list of 40 hospitals on Twitter, NPPA (The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority) clearly stated that they will face action for not following instructions. Hospitals list includes famous hospitals like Apollo Spectra, Medanta Medicity, Rockland Hospital, Moolchand Medcity in National Capital Region(NCR) and Apex Multispeciality Hospital (Varanasi & Mumbai), Vijaya Hospitals (Chennai) and Sahara Hospital (Lucknow) etc.
Government is making complete efforts to bring transparency in medical business but due to high-profit margins, some hospitals ignored instructions and not displayed new revised prices for knee implant. So, on Twitter NPPA clearly instructed hospitals to display lists with new rates for knee implant treatment.
Noida, Patna, Bhopal, Ahmedabad and Kanpur’s hospitals are also included in the list. 18th August 2017 memorandum asked all manufacturers /importers, marketers and hospitals to comply with the notified ceiling price of orthopedic knee implant system.
On 16 August 2017 government fixed a price range for knee implants from Rs. 54,000 to Rs. 1.14 lakh, nearly 70% lower than their earlier cost. The officials had warned of strict action will be taken against hospitals, importers, retailers if they charged extra on the MRP saying that the government would recover excess profit from such knee implants with 18 per cent interest and may also cancel licenses of hospitals.
The hospitals were charging very high and earlier, the average maximum retail price (MRP) for BMS was Rs 45,000 and for DES, it was Rs 1.21 lakh.
