Notification on capping prices of stents: Health Ministry to hospitals
July 26 , 2017 2679 days 1579 0
The Union health ministry has directed all hospitals, including private ones, not to over-price stents.
Stents are tiny metal tubes coated with medication, which are inserted into clogged arteries to keep them flowing well. When there was no restriction on the cost of these equipment, private hospital administrations collected lakhs of money from the patients.
In the notification dated February 13 released by the National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Authority (NPPA) , Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers, the government slashed by up to 85 percent the prices of life-saving coronary stents.
The ceiling price of bare metal stents has been fixed at Rs 7,260 per unit and that of drug eluting variety has been fixed at Rs 29,600 per unit. The move of the government is aimed at stopping the menace of over-pricing of coronary stents in various hospitals.