Shubhealth Provides Information and Packages prices for various surgeries, treat Treatment surgery cost in India
One of the hardest and most daunting problems for many of us while deciding to undergo a surgery and finalising on the provider is firstly about best medical care, and then follows how much the surgery cost is India will be.
From many of the researches done in India and around the world , it seems that many of the patients delay in getting the treatment and the major reason has been uncertainty at the billing level and how much would they end up paying.
Patient flow in Hospitals
Step 1 Taking Appointment - Doctor Consultation - Advice from the doctor to get Procedure done
Step 2 Patient Financial counselling - Admission - Course of Treatment - Discharge !!
Step1 – Mostly this may or may not take place in a hospital set up. Usually the patient from any reference visits the doctor at his local chamber or clinic which may be in nearby locality. Once the doctor sees the patient he advices them to get the procedure done and follow up to be done at his Hospital during Outpatient patient hours.
The next Visit of the patient is at the hospital where the doctor performs diagnostic test that may be laboratory test like Blood check-up as well as radiology check-up like CT scan MRI or an X-ray.
Once the doctor is convinced about the diagnosis, he guides the patient about the procedure done, what exactly is the problem and which surgery he will be performing. If the patient agrees the he is moved to next step
Step2- Once the patient and family agree for the treatment they go ahead with financial counselling. In most of the hospitals now have patient financial counselling team which discusses with the patient about the expected cost that they are likely to incur. The team shares all the details like the cost of surgery expected , how many days of hospital stay will be required , what all documents have to be submitted for getting admitted. As per the new government rule it is mandatory to record all the financial counselling both video and audio to act as proof later in case the patient or family lodges a complaint that the hospital has duped then and falsely the surgery was performed.
Once all these protocols are done the patient is advised to make the advance payment and get him admitted. The payment is usually 100% of the surgery cost is taken in advance for all patients who will be paying out of pocket.
Every morning an interim bill is shared with the patient family which shows the list of all services he has availed till now, including medicines, investigation or nay bed side procedure done. It also shows the total balance left post deduction of services cost till yesterday. This is done to keep the patient family informed to avoid any surprises later. If the amount is exceeded from the earlier briefed amount, then the patient is re counselled by the team and makes them understand the nature and severity of the problem and why the cost has increased form the earlier committed.
Finally on the discharge date the patient is asked to settle all the bills and then the patient is discharged.
More Focus on Patient Finance counselling
Usually the patient finance counselling is done by front end staffs that have no knowledge or any artificial intelligence to support them while counselling. It is usually done based on some analysis done long years back and most of the hospitals continue using this till date. The challenge comes as the counselling staff at hospital uses dated data they are often seeing committing the patients wrong or under information and when finally the bill comes it crosses way over than what was initially told to the patients.
This leads to dissatisfaction and it breaks the trust factor among the patients, also it has been seen as a major reason for anyone referring a friend or relative to any hospital. If the patient has been discharged more or less similar amount that was committed to him at the time of admission it is highly likely that the patients will refer his family and friends to the hospital.
All hospitals are usually in this misconception that by giving a lower price at the time of admission, they will be able to convert the patient more quickly and less chances that he will go to another hospital for seeking treatment. But what most of the hospitals are ignoring is the miscommunication intentionally or unintentionally (which may happen due to non-availability of required tools to the counselling team) they are doing more harm to their organisation and to the industry as a whole.
The mistrust has reached to that level that patients come to hospital thinking that they will be looted for all what they have and the billing is non-transparent
An overview of the surgery cost in India and how does it differ from government to private hospital
Based on few of the researched done across the years on understanding the surgery costs and how much is acceptable to be charged by the hospital for a given surgery. As it is rightly said that no two procedures performed are similar, they all have some sort of difference in terms of complexity etc.
But still at a broad level surgeries can be classified based on complexity and then a median cost can be worked out to show that this is the total cost that a hospital incurs for doing a surgery.
According to one of those researches it was found that Caesarean delivery was one of the most commonly performed surgery across India, including rural and urban settings and when compared the cost of surgery from an rural urban centre, the cost is around Rs. 2,419 for a primary healthcare centre in rural India and it can go up to Rs.60, 000 for a urban centre set up. The variance is huge but also the costing is very different in these kinds of setups.
The next most commonly performed surgery is Hysterectomy which is removing the whole uterus or the tissue on the sides of the uterus, this surgery cost ranges from Rs. 4,722 to Rs 70,000.
The other frequently performed surgeries are appendectomy, and as per the research an average cost that is being incurred by a primary health care centre is around Rs 2,400 to Rs 3,600, this is not even one tenth of the cost in other developed countries.
A simple lap Cholecystectomy cost around 27k in a semi urban setup and a bit complex open cholecystectomy cost around 50k for the surgery.
Hernia is also done very large volumes in India due to lack of physical activity stress and pressure in the lower abdomen area. Though hernia is not a very complex surgery and an average cost for hernia operation in an urban private hospital will be around Rs 65000.
In coronary heart disease India is one of the leading countries with most of the population suffering from one or the other kind of heart ailment. Surgery cost in India for an Angiography in any urban private hospital is around 18k and the cost of doing a Coronary Angioplasty (stenting to open the blocked arteries) is around Rs.1lacs. India has one of the highest numbers of open heart surgery done in a year, with many doctors performing more than 350-400 surgeries per year. This has established Indian doctors into the list of world’s leading medical practitioners, as they work in such high volume setup.
People suffering from Gastric and intestinal obstruction are being observed to be on rise now due to bad eating habits and stress. Many Indian states where eating more spicy items are common usually found to have such problems.
Going Forward
Like western countries where many organisations are active that help the patient understand the cost implication going forward. Similarly we will need in India as well, many of the patients will have a clear idea as to what to expect in terms of costing and other non-medical related information before they even visit the hospital. Few of the basics can be like total cost of surgery expected , if it is an insurance patient then who much out of pocket expense to be taken into consideration (Out of pocket exp. means what is to be paid by the patient , as the insurance wont reimburse all the expenditure done at the hospital. This will also tell what and how many days a patient will have to stay in the hospital and of the total expenditure what will be the breakup , like who much will be charged for room rent , for investigation and diagnostic tests , medicines and other consumables will cost how much . For Insurance patients it will also tell which all are the usual services which the Insurance will not reimburse and the patient himself has to pay for these.
Few websites are there in India which does gives some estimates about surgery cost in India, but they are most likely derived from the patient counselling or from tariff master bits and pieces & not much of analysis is done, we will need some websites which can accurately give this information to patients.
Having said that this is also true that every patient and surgery is different and cost of surgery cannot be predicted exactly.
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