After curbing prices of cardiac stents, the Government on Wednesday made the knee surgeries affordable for commoners, bringing down the cost of orthopedic implants by 59 to 70 per cent.
With the slashing of the prices, the widely used Cromium Cobalt knee implants which cost between Rs 1.58 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh will now be available at Rs 54,720.
Similarly, the price of knee implants made of special metal titanium and Oxidized Zirconium has been brought down to Rs 76,600 against market price of Rs 2,49,251. (See Box)
Around 1 to 1.5 lakh orthopaedic knee procedures are done in India every year. The move could result in savings of Rs 1,500 crore annually by patients requiring surgery and also help check unethical profiteering. According to various estimates, about 1.2 to 1.5 crore orthopaedic patients are in the need of orthopaedic implant surgery
The decision to decrease knee implants prices came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his Independence-Day speech that prices of knee surgery would be brought down. After a Union Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Minister for Chemicals & Fertilisers Ananth kumar told the media that as per the data analysis of National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), there was unreachably high margin in pricing of implants which made it a case unethical ‘profiteering’.
The NPPA, while fixing the ceiling prices, has kept all the new technology implants in mind and prices have been fixed accordingly.
The NPPA data shows manufactures, importers and distributors earning margins up to 313 per cent. It also indicated that the margin of middlemen and distributors is more than the cost of implants.
As per the WHO, by 2020, osteoarthritis is going to be the fourth largest cause of immobility in the world.
The Minister said complaints of overcharging would be strictly monitored and defaulters will be penalised.
Welcoming the move, Dr GS Grewal of the Alliance of Doctors’ for Ethical Healthcare said, “This is not enough. The Prime Minister should also give priority to capping of drugs as majority of population use some form of drug. We appeal to the Government to implement proposed Sudhanshu Pant committee recommendations that will give much needed relief to the poor and control medical corruption to some extent.”
Dr Dharminder Nagar, MD of Paras Healthcare, agreed stating that the move will encourage more people to undergo such treatment. “However, it must be ensured that there is no negative fallout of such a decision on the quality standards. Also, the Government and NPPA should ensure that healthcare providers are given some incentive for operating in areas that have no specialised care and have to deal with procurement of the implants, lack of vendors and making the doctors available,” he added.