Thane: Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) has found excess bills worth Rs 1.82 crore charged by private hospitals treating COVID patients in the last 40 days. The aforementioned amount of overcharged bills has been disclosed in an audit conducted by TMC.
Following the complaints from the patients regarding the overcharging of bills by the hospitals, an audit team was formed by the TMC.
"The audit report conducted from July 10 to August 21, counts the total amount of Rs 1.82 crore objectional bill charged by various COVID hospitals in Thane. While, until now total Rs 26.68 lakh amount has been refunded to the patients by the respective hospitals after TMC's directions," said Sandeep Malvi, deputy municipal commissioner, TMC.
The hospital's were given strict directions as far as charging excess bills to the COVID patients is concerned. Hence, in last month the licence of Horizon hospital, which is one of the COVID centres in Thane, was cancelled after for a month after finding excess amount of bills charged amid Lockdown to COVID patients.
"So far the Horizon hospital has not been re-alloted with the license to run as a COVID centre. At present Thane consists of total 18 hospitals authorised as COVID centres," said Kiran Tayde, chief audit officer, from TMC.
"The total of 4106 bills was received by the TMC audit team. Hence, so far 3347 bills have been audited; out of which total 1362 bills has found objectionable which has counted total of Rs1.82 crore and 39 thousand, excess amount of bill charged by different hospitals (COVID centres) during an audit conducted by TMC," added Tayde.
