To make fast buck, small clinics treat COVID patients as fever cases

VELLORE: Small clinics, specially, in Vellore, Ranipet, Tirupattur and Tiruvannamalai districts are making a quick buck using the pandemic situation.

Sources said that though the state has capped the rates to be charged by private hospitals, the government norms does not seem to bring small clinics under this ambit.

These clinics manage to push in two or three beds and admit patients with COVID-19 in the guise of treating fever cases. If the infected person’s condition worsens, they advise the family members or attendants to take the patient to nearby major government hospitals.

It may be recalled that recently Tiruvannamalai district health officials sealed a small clinic near Arani bus stand where the doctor was treating patients with COVID by lining up cots with oxygen cylinders on the street and under trees. The clinic had no permit to admit cases.

Tirupattur Collector MP Sivan Arul said, “in the last wave, a doctor in town was unwilling to treat patients fearing virus infection, but now he is charging up to Rs 15,000 per day for admission in a dingy clinic.”

While clinics were covered under the Clinical Establishments

Act many doctors were reluctant to reveal whether they have permits to install beds or treat coronavirus patients as happened when a Tirupattur doctor’s clinic was sealed last Sunday after he refused to heed two warnings not to treat COVID patients. “His waiting room was just a car shed,” Sivan Arul said.

“Fear of death drives patients to small clinics as they feel they will be charged less,” the Collector said, adding, “the rate of rural population approaching quacks for treatment is high in the district.”

This resulted in the Collector a few days ago chairing a meeting of medical, revenue and police personnel to create awareness among public to avoid quacks in COVID treatment.

“One way to overcome such issues was for government hospital to ramp up facilities and charge minimally for it,” said a health professional seeking anonymity. “Now that patients have proved they have the money power to approach private hospitals, special rooms with required facilities can also be created with the present improved bed strength in government hospitals on a charge basis, which even if it is Rs 2,000 a day, will still be nearly one fifth or more of what private hospital charge,” the doctor added.