Industry Reacts Negatively To Stent Price Capping By NPPA

It will deprive patients of latest tech advancements, say medical technology industry, associations.

Government of India recently issued a notification to fix ceiling prices of coronary stents to eventually bring down the cost of coronary stents, currently hiked by about 380 per cent.

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According to a recent data published by National Interventional Council (NIC), surgeries involving stent procedures have tripled over the last five years. In the absence of proper regulatory framework, a patient undergoing such a procedure ends up paying anywhere between 10 to 1000 per cent more than the actual cost of stent, pushing the cost of medical procedure to around ₹200,000 – 250,000.

Nonetheless, recently the government has included all types of stents – drug-eluting stents (DES), bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS) and bare metal stents (BMS) in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) and has fixed their ceiling prices at ₹29,600 for DES and BVS and ₹7,260 for BMS respectively. The cap on prices is with immediate effect. It will lead to a reduction in stent prices by 85 per cent. Reportedly, this move would directly result in the reduction of total procedure cost by around 25-30 per cent.

Ananth Kumar, Union Minister for Chemicals & Fertilizers and Parliamentary Affairs, asserted that the step is a major decisive action on the unethical margins charged at each stage in the supply chain of coronary stents. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had included Coronary Stents in the National List of Essential Medicines, 2015 (NLEM, 2015) on July 19, 2016 and the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers incorporated Coronary Stents in Schedule I of the Drug Prices Control Order (DPCO), 2013 on December 21, 2016.

However, the decision has not found favour with many in the stent industry. The critics believe that the move will not lead to the anticipated results, on the contrary it could have adverse effects.