On Monday, March 2, the State Health Department submitted a proposal to the administration that it will be hiking the price of its medical services by 20 per cent for Mumbai residents and 30 per cent for others. This decision is pending approval from the Standing Committee. It is expected that the approval will come within this month and a formal announcement will follow suit.
As there was a huge gap between the revenue and expenditure of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) especially for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and CT scan services, they had proposed to increase the overall cost. After the approval, the rates will increase in all 16 BMC-run main and peripheral hospitals across the city. However, according to the health department officials, the rates are still comparatively less as compared to private hospitals.
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The most prominent civic-run hospitals in the city are BYL Nair, KEM and Sion Hospital which witnesses an inflow of over 5,000 patients daily to avail several medical services at subsidised rates. The situation will get worse as the monsoon will commence. During monsoon, there are several outbreaks of diseases and all the civic-run hospitals are occupied. In some hospitals, the situation is so bad that due to lack of hospital beds, patients are given a cot, which is placed in between the general ward.
Notably, the last time BMC had increased the medical service prices was in 2000. On average, the corporation spends ₹300 to ₹500 on each patient coming to the OPD and ₹3,000 on the patient admitted to the hospital for treatment. The municipality was spending ₹3,300 crores a year on the health system. In the recent BMC budget, it increased the health budget by 3 per cent from ₹4,151 crores in 2019 to ₹4,260 for the year 2020-21.
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