MUMBAI: Following a rise in Covid cases in Maharashtra’s rural areas, the government has decided to reserve 80 per cent of hospital beds for the pandemic patients and fix the charges for medical treatment in private hospitals.
CM Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday asked district authorities to ensure implementation of the order in letter and spirit across rural areas. “Private hospitals have to reserve 80% of the beds and charge the patients as per the government rate card. The rest of 20 per cent beds will be charged as per prescribed rates,” said Health Minister Rajesh Tope.
Tope said the government had received several demands asking for a reduction in the treatment cost in private hospitals. He said the authorities would conduct hospital audits to verify whether the hospitals have followed the government order.
As per the notification, the bed charges are Rs 4,000 per day for the ‘A’ category hospitals, Rs 3,000 for the ‘B’ category and Rs 2,400 for ‘C’ category. Nursing, testing, medicines and food are also included. High-cost testing, checking and costly medicines are excluded from this package.
For the ICU ventilators, the bed charges for ‘A’ category city hospitals are Rs 9,000, Rs 6,700 for the ‘B’ category and Rs 5,400 for the ‘C’ category hospitals. The state government has fixed different rate for ICU beds for Covid 19 patients, which are Rs 7,500 for ‘A’ category hospitals, Rs 5,500 for ‘B’ category while Rs 4,500 for C class city hospitals.
In the ‘A’ category, metro cities -- Mumbai, Thane, Pune and Nagpur - are included. In the B category come Nashik, Aurangabad, Amaravati and other two-tier cities. In the ‘C’ category, all rural districts are included.