Viroc Hospital appreciates price slash on Knee Replacement implants

There was no control over medical orthopedic implants. Margins on orthopedic implants was as high as 300% of landed price. This was due to huge margins at various levels of the supply chains.

The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has started monitoring the prices of orthopedic implants also.

According to NPPA the total trade margin is the MRP minus import price. In this, distributor & hospital get a margin of around 300%. Ultimately the company importing these implants earns a margin of around 70-75%. Around 1.15-1.50 crore people require knee surgery in India, but they couldn’t get the benefit due to such unexpected prices.

Now at present Government has announce slash over these implant prices. The costs of knee implants will now have around 60-65% reduction. This fleecing slash over implant costs seems like a good news for the people with knee problems. Knee implant costs were ranges around 80,000-1.15 lacs. Now they are available at 65,000/- INR.

Recently committee meeting was set at our hospital. This decision of government was not absorb by the orthopedic surgeons nationally and locally in Baroda. Viroc hospital aims to their patient. So, to transfer brilliant idea came into picture during the meeting. The mission was not to gain acute patients, but it was larger than life. The idea was, Viroc hospital welcomes the price slash to implants and hospital will provide the same discount in procedure/hospital chargers rather increasing it. Despite of sustaining such loss, no other institute would be able to absorb such slash by decreasing their own hospital costs.

Such idea was cursed by the other orthopedic doctors locally. We appealed them that this decision was for social cause. This mission would benefit not only the patients but there would be benefit to whole implant industry and to orthopedic surgeons also. The only armamentary to compensate such losses for implant industries and for hospital is to increase all over turnover.

Such decision is ultimately going to increase the number of patients to get maximum benefit. So, by keeping a larger goal in mind this mission was set to serve maximum advantage to the patient and ultimately to the society.