Published Sep 14, 2026 | 6:57 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 14, 2026 | 6:57 PM
Synopsis: Telangana MLC Vijayashanti has alleged that patients with persistent fever are subjected to unnecessary tests and bills of ₹15,000 to ₹30,000 at private hospitals. The IMA has rejected the generalisation, while government data shows households spend 61 times more at private hospitals than government facilities for infection treatment.
Telangana Congress MLC Vijayashanti has accused private hospitals of exploiting patients seeking treatment for fever, alleging that routine illness can result in unnecessary investigations and bills of ₹15,000 to ₹30,000. The Indian Medical Association’s Warangal branch has rejected the broad generalisation, saying the actions of a few doctors or corporate hospitals should not be attributed to the entire medical profession.
Government expenditure data, however, shows a sharp difference in what households spend at government and private hospitals in Telangana. According to the National Sample Survey’s 80th Round, households spent an average ₹41 at government hospitals and ₹2,523 at private hospitals for treatment of infections, a 61-fold difference.
Vijayashanti raised the issue in the Telangana Legislative Council on 9 September, saying viral fever had been affecting people in Hyderabad for several months.
“For the past few months, people in Hyderabad have been suffering from viral fever,” she said, describing a pattern in which patients initially visit a doctor for symptoms such as sore throat, body aches and fever, receive medicines such as Dolo and return home.
But when the fever persists, she said, patients are pushed towards private hospitals. “Even after taking the medicine for two or three days, the fever does not subside,” Vijayashanti said. “When the fever does not come down, people go to private hospitals.”
That, she alleged, is when costs begin escalating. “The moment they enter a private hospital, it seems as though the objective is to extract as much money from them as possible,” she said.
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Vijayashanti said patients could then be asked to undergo blood and urine tests, scans and X-rays. “People who have simply developed a fever are frightened and made to spend ₹15,000, ₹20,000 or even ₹30,000,” she said.
She also questioned consultation charges. “How much is the doctor’s consultation fee just to write a prescription? ₹1,000 or ₹1,500. For an ordinary fever,” she said.
Her criticism extended to emergency treatment, where she said bills can run into lakhs of rupees. She also referred to the Supreme Court’s direction on reasonable and uniform rates at private hospitals and Telangana’s Clinical Establishments Act.
“Doctors say they are providing a service to society,” she said. “But what are they doing? They are selling healthcare. It has become a business.”
However, the NSS records household expenditure on treatment for infections according to where patients sought care. While the category is broader than fever alone, it provides a comparison between public and private facilities.
In Telangana, the average household expenditure was ₹41 at a government hospital compared with ₹2,523 at a private hospital, a 61-fold difference. Nationally, the corresponding figures were ₹206 and ₹1,972, making private expenditure nearly 10 times higher.
The IMA’s Warangal branch said it supports action against unnecessary investigations and excessive billing where such practices are established, but objected to generalising them across the profession.
“IMA fully supports measures to prevent unnecessary investigations, irrational treatment and excessive billing wherever such practices are established,” the branch said in a statement signed by its president, Dr P Manmohan Raju. “However, generalising the actions of a few doctors or corporate hospitals to the entire medical fraternity is unfair, misleading and damaging to the profession.”
On consultation fees, the IMA said they vary according to a doctor’s qualification, speciality, experience, location and type of facility. “A complicated or serious illness cannot be compared with a simple self-limiting fever,” it said.
The association also stressed the difference between smaller private facilities and corporate hospitals.
“Small and medium-sized private hospitals are not comparable with large corporate hospitals,” it said, pointing to staff and infrastructure costs, equipment loans, waste management, fire and municipal compliance, licences and taxes.
The NSS does not separate small nursing homes from large hospital chains, so the dataset cannot test this distinction.
The NSS’s national item-wise data also provides context to Vijayashanti’s focus on consultation fees.
The average private-hospital outpatient expenditure was ₹1,503. Doctors’ fees accounted for ₹201, medicines ₹975, diagnostics ₹245 and other expenses ₹82. Medicines were therefore the largest component, followed by diagnostics and doctors’ fees.
Dr Vyakaranam Nageshwar, a pulmonologist and immunologist, said persistent fever cannot automatically be treated as a simple illness requiring only paracetamol.
“There can be around 200 possible causes,” he said, referring to causes including autoimmune conditions, metabolic disorders, infections and malignancies.
“Will all of these come down with Dolo? We want the fever to come down, just like you. But it does not. And if it does not come down, that is precisely why the person goes to a hospital,” Nageshwar said.
His argument addresses the medical basis for investigations in patients whose fever persists. The NSS cannot determine whether an individual test was clinically justified.
The difference becomes substantially larger when patients are admitted.
In Telangana, the NSS recorded average household expenditure of ₹5,856 for hospitalisation at a government hospital and ₹72,561 at a private hospital, highest in the country, a difference of more than 12 times.
A package component accounted for ₹32,633 of the ₹72,561 private hospitalisation expenditure. Doctors’ and surgeons’ fees accounted for ₹13,856, medicines ₹9,609, bed charges ₹8,840 and diagnostic tests ₹5,379.
A package component refers to a bundled hospital charge in which multiple services or elements of treatment are combined and billed as a single amount, rather than being listed separately.
The package component and doctors’ and surgeons’ fees together accounted for about 64 percent of the average private hospitalisation expenditure.
The NSS does not specify what services were included in each package, or the full cost incurred by the hospital to provide them.
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The IMA’s argument that private hospitals have substantial operating costs can be examined through financial disclosures of large hospital chains, although these figures are not representative of every private hospital.
Manipal Health Enterprises reported ₹10,521 crore in total income and ₹9,268 crore in total expenses in FY2026. Its expenses included ₹2,137 crore on medical consumables and pharmacy, equivalent to 20.3 percent of total income; ₹1,490 crore on employee benefits, or 14.2 percent; ₹864 crore in finance costs, or 8.2 percent; ₹680 crore in depreciation and amortisation, or 6.5 percent; and ₹4,118 crore in other expenses, or 39.1 percent.
Doctors’ professional fees were about ₹2,349 crore, or 22.3 percent of total income. Manipal said most doctors work as consultants or on a fee-for-service basis, which is why their payments are recorded under other expenses rather than employee benefits.
Within other expenses, the company reported ₹370 crore on advertising and sales promotion (3.5 percent of total income), ₹217 crore on housekeeping (2.1 percent), ₹152 crore on contractual manpower (1.4 percent), ₹142 crore on utilities such as power and fuel (1.3 percent), ₹86 crore on rent (0.8 percent) and ₹66 crore on security (0.6 percent).
Manipal’s filing says hospitals need to continually invest in clinical technology and infrastructure, while medical equipment has limited useful lives and can become obsolete.
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Nageshwar argues that pricing in corporate hospitals should not be attributed solely to doctors.
“The doctor does not decide how much the bill should be in a corporate hospital. The corporate management decides. The corporate investors decide,” he said.
He also argued that regulatory barriers can make it difficult for specialists to establish smaller facilities that provide basic diagnostic services.
“If a cardiologist wants to set up a small clinic, install an ECG and offer an echocardiogram, you create enormous hurdles by not giving the necessary permissions,” he said. “A patient could go to that cardiologist, pay ₹500 or ₹1,000, get an ECG and leave. But you do not give the cardiologist the necessary permissions.”
Nageshwar also pointed to insurance as another factor influencing hospitalisation.
“You have linked everything to insurance. Insurance companies and corporate hospitals have become interconnected, and they say they will not provide treatment unless the patient is admitted,” he said.
The NSS does not establish that insurance requirements cause unnecessary admissions.
Dr Ranga Reddy Burri, a public health activist and president of the Infection Control Academy of India, similarly argued that corporate ownership and medical practice should be treated as separate questions.
“Treat private-equity investment in Indian healthcare, especially the hospital sector, as a national and strategic health-security issue,” Burri said. “A doctor and a corporate hospital are not the same and must never be conflated.”
