Hyderabad: Private hospitals charge upto Rs 20,000 for home quarantine

Hyderabad: Private hospitals have joined the fight against COVID 19 and decided to provide 'quarantine services' for the patients in the comfort of their homes.

Leading the charge are CARE hospitals and Yashoda hospitals. The two hospitals have come up with different packages for providing “home quarantine services” for the suspected COVID patients.

CARE Hospitals has put a price tag of Rs 7,999 for providing home care services to a patient. The 17-day service will include a daily remote monitoring call from the physician or nurse. This will be combined with dietician support, psychological counseling, exercise sessions, video consultation by the doctor, app-based services, home delivery of medicines, and ambulance support.

For the home care services in Yashoda hospital, the home quarantine package of 15 days will cost Rs 19,500 per patient. The home care service includes daily virtual monitoring of vitals, oxygen saturation and medication compliance, video consultations with the physician, virtual movement, mobility, and breathing sessions by physiotherapists among other services. A COVID-19 kit, with a digital pulse oximeter, digital thermometer, N95 masks, sanitizer, incentive spirometer, and gloves will also be provided.

On June 15, the Telangana government had fixed a rate list for the services being provided by a private hospital. For isolation and treatment facilities in private hospitals, the fee has been fixed at Rs 4,000 per day.

Further, for ICU (Intensive Care Unit) without a ventilator facility, the fee prescribed is Rs 7,500 per day. For ICU with a ventilator facility, the prescribed fee is Rs 9,000 per day.

Meanwhile, hospitals are allowed to charge an additional sum for services like PPE, interventional procedures like bronchoscopy, biopsy and pleural tapping, administration of high-end drugs and high-end investigations like CT-Scan, MRI, PET scan