The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission (WBCERC) on Thursday made strong observations on ‘highly inflated bills’ claimed by a premier private hospital, along the EM Bypass, for treatment of a boy who died of dengue recently at the hospital.
While speaking to the reporters Justice Asim Banerjee, chairman of the WBCERC, said, “The hospital charged expensive bills amounting to around Rs 9 lakh for five days and eighteen hours treatment of a dengue-affected boy Manoj kumar Pradhan.” “The boy died of dengue at the hospital after undergoing treatment for about six days there. The insurance company covered up to Rs 5 lakh while his father paid Rs 2 lakh.
The hospital authorities waived the rest amount because they could not save the boy,” Justice Banerjee, former judge of the Calcutta High Court said. In the course of hearings at the WBCERC office the experts of the commission found that the hospital charged Rs 2,000 for a test, which actually costs Rs 200. “The hospital authorities confessed that the infrastructure charge for the particular test is Rs 1,800