Patients from other cities will now have to shell out more for seeking treatment at BMC hospitals. The civic body has proposed to levy 20 per cent extra health service charges on outside patients. The issue is likely to snowball into a major controversy ahead of the civic elections next year.
While presenting the budget for the year 2016-17, civic chief Ajoy Mehta had proposed an extra service charge for patients from other cities who come to municipal hospitals for treatment.
About 45 per cent of the total patients treated by BMC hospitals are the residents of areas other than Mumbai. BMC, for many years, has been charging health service charges for all patients — both living in the city and outside. However, outside patients will now be charged more.
According to civic officials, the BMC spends over Rs 3,600 crore on health and gives quality service at low costs. But it generates revenue of only Rs 248 crore, which is only 6.74 per cent of the total spending on healthcare facilities. Hence, the civic body has decided to levy extra health service charges on outside patients. They may be from neighbouring cities like Pune, Kalyan or from other states.
However, Shiv Sena — the ruling party in the BMC — has opposed the move, saying that extra charges should be levied only on out-of-state patients and the civic body can retrieve its cost from them.
Senior Shiv Sena corporator Shailesh Phanse said that it would be an injustice to charge extra health service charges on people from other parts of Maharashtra as they are also citizens of the state. “But patients from other states can charged extra and BMC can recover the cost from their respective states,” he said.
However, Opposition parties have opposed the move. “BMC should tell us what is the definition of an outsider We are all Indians. We will not allow the BMC to charge extra charge for outsiders,” said Opposition leader Pravin Chheda from Congress.
Apart from this, the various treatments in municipal hospitals will also see a rise in their rates. Accordingly, charges of surgeries, X-rays, BMR, MRI, sonography, pathology, biopsy tests are likely to increase by 75 to 100 per cent.
According to civic officials, the service charges for health care were determined in the year 2000 and over the past 15 years, there is substantial increase in the cost of services. To procure advanced medical equipment and to deal with rising maintenance and establishment costs, healthcare charges need to be increased.
“There is a huge discrepancy (1:20) in the ratio of revenue and expenditure of three major BMC hospitals — KEM, Nair and Sion. In the year 2014-15, deposits from these hospitals were a mere Rs 31.69 crore, whereas the expenditure was Rs 639.29 crore. By increasing the hospital charges, the BMC will get additional revenue of Rs 92 crore, which will bring down the ratio to 1:8.
