State Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission advices for transparency in bills
Telegraph | 26 March 2025
The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission has asked hospitals to be “transparent and reasonable” in their billing to avoid patients leaving hospitals without clearing the bills.
At a meeting with private hospitals in Bengal on Monday, the commission’s chairperson, retired judge Ashim Banerjee, said they had recently received six complaints from various hospitals where the patients’ relatives did not clear the bills.
An official of a hospital chain, who was present at the meeting, said in the past eight months 18 patients left its Calcutta unit without clearing the bills.
“Some patients just refuse to pay. It is a minuscule percentage but if we don’t deal with it now such instances will keep growing. Certain people ask the patient’s relatives not to pay the hospital. Instead, these people ask for money, with the promise that they would settle the matter with the hospital,” the official said.
Banerjee told the officials that the billing process should be reasonable and transparent.
“There was a case where a hospital charged a coma patient for 46 mineral water bottles. Your supply chain does not ask why a coma patient needed water bottles and it gets billed,” said Banerjee.
At a news conference later in the day, Banerjee said the commission advised the hospitals that problems would occur if the practice of preparing inflated bills by a section of private healthcare institutes were not controlled.
“A patient is admitted for a package of ₹1.5 lakh and at the end is billed ₹4.5 lakh. If such instances occur, there will be problems. We have told the hospitals to check the bills and see how they charge for investigations, medicines and consumables. These areas can make the bills transparent,” Banerjee said.
“We have received complaints from the hospitals that they are coming across increasing instances where patient relatives are refusing to clear the bills,” Banerjee added. “The hospitals also have equal responsibility to resolve the issue,” he said.
The commission met officials of 47 private hospitals at the Priyamvada Birla Institute of Nursing on Monday to discuss “affordable health services.”
The official of one “major” hospital suggested that the commission “fixed the cost of some surgeries and procedures”, Banerjee said.
“The commission did not comment on the proposal,” said Banerjee.
A senior official of one hospital later told Metro that it was suggested at the meeting that there should be some standardisation of cost. Different hospitals charge different rates for the same surgery and the gaps are often quite high.
“The hospital charging more might argue that they have advanced equipment, but in that case, the hospital administration must explain to the patient’s family why they were charging more,” said Sudipta Mitra, chief executive of Peerless Hospital, who was present at Monday’s meeting.
“Often the same hospital charges different rates for the same investigation. There are different rates for general beds; twin sharing beds and a single cabin bed. Why would this happen? You can only charge different rates for the room quality and the bed. The investigations cannot have different rates,” said Mitra.
The commission also asked the hospitals to conduct more precise and elaborate counselling of patient families during admission.
A commission member said a hospital in Bengaluru uses professional counsellors who are present with doctors while they talk with a patient’s family.
“All doctors may not be good at communicating. The professional counsellor will step in where required and make things clear to the patient’s family,” said the member.
“We have asked the hospitals to submit the number of operational beds, total number of patients admitted, total admissions under Swasthya Sathi and total admissions under West Bengal Health Scheme from three financial years — 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25,” Banerjee said.