Nellore: Corporate Hospitals fined for violating Aarogyasri norms

Nellore: Joint Collector Dr N Prabhakar Reddy imposed huge penalties on the local corporate hospitals for collecting amounts from the beneficiaries of Aarogyasri violating the guidelines.

Addressing the district disciplinary committee meeting on Saturday, the Joint Collector asked the health officials to impose penalties against the corporate hospitals that violated the established norms.

Stating that penalties to the tune of Rs 18 lakh collected from corporate hospitals for violating rules and regulations, he said Medicover, Lotus, Narayana and KIMS hospitals have collected additional amounts from the patients and the officials imposed a penalty of ten times the collected amount.

Medicover Hospitals collected Rs 1,10,840 and the officials imposed Rs 11,08,400, KIMS Hospitals collected Rs 14,652 and the officials imposed Rs 1,46,520, Lotus Hospitals collected Rs 10,800 and the officials imposed Rs 1,08,000 and Narayana General Hospitals collected Rs 50,848 and the officials imposed Rs 5,08,400 on them.

He said the network hospitals should conduct medical examinations at free of cost, without collecting any amount from the Aarogyasri patients. He also asked the officials should see all hospitals across the district to conduct tests at the laboratories or diagnostic centres without collecting any charges from them.

Aarogyasri District Coordinator Dr Chandrasekhar, DMHO Dr G Rajyalakshmi, DCHS Dr Prabhavathi, Retired DCHS DR Subba Rao and representatives of KIMS, Lotus, Medicover, and Narayana Hospitals were present.