The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission (WBCERC) held a meeting with representatives of the Association of Hospitals of Eastern India over capping the charges for 15 pathological and five radiological tests.

The meeting was attended by representatives of premier hospitals like Belle Vue Clinic, Apollo Gleneagles, AMRI Hospitals, Medical, Woodlands. Representatives have urged the WBCERC headed by retired judge Ashim Banerjee to reconsider the advisory over price capping and also requested the body to implement the advisory in all other private hospitals with beds less than 150 each.

“The advisory issued by the commission in July won’t be cost-effective for big hospitals accommodating more than 150 beds each. We will incur huge loss following the advisory capping the rates of pathological and radiological tests,” they said during the meeting.

“We won’t roll back the advisory because we have come to know that only two to three hospitals are facing problems owing to capping of rates of several pathological and radiological tests while 15 to 16 hospitals have no problems,” Justice Banerjee told reporters.

The AHEI president Rupak Barua has also questioned, “Why all hospitals below 150 bed strength each are not brought under the purview of the advisory. Only big hospitals with 150 beds and above will have to follow the guidelines,” he added.

“The capping of rates is not justified and we have conveyed our grievances to the commission today. We have also urged the commission to let us know how the transparency has been maintained while fixing rates in the 15 pathological and five radiological tests. We will sit for another meeting with the commission within in a couple of weeks,” Barua said.

The AHEI had earlier written to the commission stating their objections. The commission had on 3 July fixed a limit on the rates that private hospitals could charge for a number of pathological and radiological tests. The advisory has capped the chest X-ray PA rate at Rs 400 and the HRCT (128 slice CT scan) rate at Rs5,200. Among pathological tests, the Procalcitonin test rate has been capped at Rs4,000 and the IL-6 test rate at Rs3,500.