While coronavirus has disrupted all walks of life, those directly suffering from the disease have another problem at hand. The hikes in hospital prices. People in Delhi have been constantly complaining about the extremely high hospital rates for a single day which could range anywhere from a few thousands to lakhs. Now, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority has decided to handle the issue and has fixed the rates of hospital isolation beds for all the coronavirus or Covid-19 positive patients.

The prescribed maximum per day package rates for COVID related treatments in private hospitals in NCT of Delhi are as below:

Here what the order read like:

The hospitals would follow the national guidelines on admission of COVID-19 patients. Generally, hospital care is required for COVID-patients with moderate or severe/very severe disease. Patients with mild disease are to be managed at home or in COVID Care Centers which are not hospital but improvised isolation/ observation facilities created in non-hospital premises. However, patients with mild disease but having co-morbidities and/ or if elderly, as defined may be treated as having moderate illness and therefore admitted.

The rates for private hospitals beds would be all inclusive as a package. This will include, but not limited to: bed, food and other amenities, monitoring, nursing care, doctors’ visits/ consults, investigations including imaging, treatment as per the national protocol for COVID care and standard care for co-morbidities, oxygen, blood transfusion etc.

The package rates would include costs of medical care of underlying co-morbid conditions including supportive care and cost of medications thereof, for the duration of care for COVID. Since many of the COVID patients have conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, etc., the charges for medical care of such co-morbidities will be a part of the package. This would include short term haemodialysis as a part of acute care during the current admissions.

The rates would apply to standard care of COVID-19 patients as per the National Guidelines. But these would not cover experimental therapies (e.g. Ramdesivir etc.). Standard management of Co-morbidities would be covered.

The charges will not include the cost of COVID-19 diagnostic test(s) as well as IL-6 Levels.

The proposed charges will apply to paediatric patients as well.

For pregnant women, costs for delivery (normal/C-section) and care of new born would be charged by the hospital extra as per prevailing PMJA Y rates of relevant packages.