‘Shivam Hospital gave highly inflated bills’

The hospital has still not cleared payments for medicines purchased from Shivam Chemist

Even as the investigation into the fake vaccination drive in the city deepens, mid-day has found out that the Charkop-based Shivam Hospital was also allegedly involved in fleecing patients by giving them remdesivir injections at five times its actual price and inflated hospital bills. Family members of some of the patients said that the hospital never mentioned the cost break-ups in the bills.

Owner of Shivam Chemist located on the hospital premises revealed that the authorities would purchase the injections and medicines from him and delay payments for the same saying that those were included in the patients' mediclaim policies and he would get it only after the amounts were cleared. As a result, Ratnakar Shetty, who had taken the shop on rent in March, shut it down in May, as his payments totaling Rs 1.5 crore were not cleared by the hospital. However, he managed to get the Rs 1.5 crore, which he had paid as deposit, from the owner.

‘Stopped releasing payments'

Speaking to mid-day, Shetty said, "During the lockdown I took Shivam Chemist on rent. I did good business initially but then the hospital stopped releasing payments. The hospital also purchased remedisivir injections worth Rs 4.19 lakh from me but didn't pay for them. They told me that the cost of the injections and medicines were included under the mediclaim policies of the patients. About two to three months later when I asked for the payment, they said that the mediclaim had not got cleared. I found many illegalities so I closed down the shop."

Requesting anonymity, a patient's relative said, "My wife's relative was admitted to Shivam Hospital with Covid in April. The hospital gave us two remdesivir injections from the chemist and provided medicines for 10 days for Rs 93,000. They didn't even mention the cost break-ups in the bill but I'm sure they charged five times more for the injections. We were charged Rs 10,000 for blood and urine tests, which cost a maximum of Rs 2,000. I paid more than Rs 2.67 lakh for admission and bed charges, which were also inflated. When I checked the bill with the chemist, I realised that the total cost of the injections and medicines was Rs 20,000."

Payments in cash

Another relative of a patient who was admitted in mid-April, said, "My father was admitted to Shivam Hospital and he needed six remdesivir injections but the hospital only arranged for two. They never gave us a bill and we made payments in cash. When we asked for the bill for the remdesivir injections, they asked me to take my father to a different hospital. I paid Rs 3 lakh for my father's treatment at the hospital for about 10 days."

mid-day has also found out that the bills for remdesivir injections given by the chemist to the hospital included GST but the authorities never gave those bills to the patients.