Covid Treatment in Pvt Hospitals: Will look into unusually high costs
Health Minister Zahid Maleque yesterday said the government would look into overcharging Covid patients at private hospitals.
"We will look into this issue so that they [private hospitals] cannot overcharge patients," he said.
The minister was replying to a query from a journalist after formally inaugurating the National Vitamin A Plus Campaign in Dhaka.
Earlier in the day, Zahid told parliament that the treatment cost for a Covid patient at public hospitals was Tk 15,000 for general bed and Tk 50,000 for ICU bed per day.
"This was found in a study by the Health Economics Unit [of the health ministry]," the minister told journalists.
On May 1, the HEU study revealed that the government was spending, on average, Tk 1.28 lakh for treatment of a Covid patient in general bed and Tk 4.08 lakh in intensive care unit (ICU) of public hospitals.
The study also found that the Covid treatment cost was abnormally higher in private hospitals than that in public healthcare facilities.
The major differences were found in the diagnosis and medicine costs. Experts said costs go up at private hospitals due to not following the national Covid-19 treatment protocol.
In case of private hospitals, the treatment cost for a Covid patient was around Tk 2.42 lakh in general beds and around Tk 5.09 lakh in ICU beds, said the HEU study. The total cost is borne by patients.
At private hospitals, a Covid patient spends the most on medicine, which is around 30 percent of the total treatment cost. This is almost double the amount spent at public hospitals.
The diagnosis cost in private hospitals is 17.7 percent of the total treatment cost. This is more than seven times the amount spent in public hospitals for the same purpose.
"The costs for diagnosis and medicine are abnormally higher in private hospitals than in public hospitals. This indicates that the national treatment protocol for Covid-19 is not being followed properly," Md Nurul Amin, director (research) at the HEU, told The Daily Star last month.
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