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Patna,(BiharTimes): Senior office-bearers of the Indian Medical Association, (IMA) Bihar Chapter, have alleged that insurance companies were behind the multi-crore “uterus scam”.
Talking to mediapersons in Patna on Tuesday, they claimed that doctors and hospitals in Samastipur, Begusarai, Muzaffarpur etc are wrongly being indicted for hysterectomy under the National Health Insurance Scheme for BPL families.
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IMA state president Arun Kumar Thakur refuted all allegations against the doctors saying that it was a deep-rooted conspiracy chalked out by insurance companies to dupe money meant to be given to hospitals.
He said the IMA is against such generalized allegations which are doing the rounds without any thorough inquiry and proofs. Under the scheme, empanelled hospitals are to be provided Rs 10,000 for each patient for conducting surgeries like cholecystostomy, appendicectomy, hysterectomy etc.
Dr Thakur said that the hospitals that conducted these surgeries on the needy people have not even been paid by the insurance firms and charges have been levelled against them. No doctor would conduct these surgeries without indications.
The IMA has formed a four-member committee headed by veteran gynaecologist Manju Geeta Mishra to carry out a probe in the matter.
Senior IMA member Sahjanand Prasad said the government should first ask for the individual complaints if someone feels that she had wrongly been operated upon. The committee constituted by the IMA would then check whether the surgery was needed or not in those cases.
He said the way doctors are being singled out only suggests that there is a malafide intention of those with vested interest.
Dr Prasad said it is unfortunate that some bureaucrats like district magistrates are backing the allegations against the doctors.
The IMA members also stressed that conducting surgeries would mean no monetary benefit for the hospitals as the operations were expensive and hospitals made a profit of barely Rs 1,000-Rs 1,500 per surgery.
According to other IMA functionary Dr Sushma Prasad, no hospital, which has carried out the surgeries under the scheme, has been paid a single penny till date. In this case, the hospitals running on losses are being dragged into this controversy.
As reported earlier under the scheme, the central government provides smart cards worth Rs 30,000 with a validity period of one year to the BPL families. Last month, it came to light that hundreds of women, including many of them under 20, underwent the surgery. It was also reported that many hospitals even showed conducting operations on men for submitting inflated bills to the insurance companies.
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