NEW DELHI: Concerned over exorbitant pricing of stents and other medical devices, a parliamentary panel has recommended that there should be a regulatory authority at the national level under the administrative control of the health ministry to broadly fix the price of common medical procedures.
The Committee on Petitions headed by Rajya Sabha MP Prabhat Jha in its report tabled in Rajya Sabha said that a regulatory authority is required to fix and ensure fair and transparent pricing of healthcare services and also to ensure its implementation.
In order to ensure irrational and unnecessary use of Drug Eluting Stents (DES), the Committee felt that there is an urgent need to establish an expert committee free of conflicts of interest, to develop a standard treatment protocol for all cardiac diseases, especially on coronary angioplasty.
“Proper investigation may be done on the excessive use of stents in different hospitals,” recommended the committee.
It also said that the government should ensure that the patient and their families are able to approach this authority if they have a grievance on so called treatment packages and dubious itemized bills offered by hospitals.
Raising question on the high duty structure on the raw material to be imported for manufacturing of medical devices, the committee was unable to understand that why there is customs duty of 30 percent on raw material while finished medical devices can be imported at substantial lower reates.
“The government has to rationalize the duty structure to give impetus to establish large scale manufacturing facilities for medical devices in the country,” it said.
The committee recommended for all health related matters to be brought under one ministry which is the health ministry specifically, issues concerning the entire pharmaceutical industry, the medical devices industry both in terms of quality and pricing.