Bengaluru: Karnataka Food Safety and Drug Administration (FDA) is set to withdraw its order directing hospitals, healthcare institutions and medicine retailers to disclose the landing cost, maximum retail price (MRP) and price charged to patients for medicines and medical devices.The order, issued earlier this week, will be recalled in a couple of days, a source in FDA said, citing a related case in the Supreme Court. Moreover, the final call on this matter has to be taken by National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority based on its regulations, the source added.Under the now-scrapped order, hospitals were required to issue itemised bills from November 1, listing every medicine, medical device, implant and consumable separately. Each entry had to include the product name, generic and brand names, wherever applicable, batch number, and manufacturing and expiry dates.The order was issued after officials flagged a huge mismatch in prices between landing costs of medicines and medical devices and the prices at which patients were billed. FDA and health minister UT Khader had also written to NPPA, highlighting these differences and calling for greater scrutiny of drug pricing.The bills were required to specify the base price excluding taxes, the MRP printed on the pack or notified by NPPA, the price charged to the patient and any applicable taxes not already included in the MRP.Karnataka has been flagging concerns over the wide gap between procurement costs and patient billing prices for the past two months. Khader had recently called for a central inter-ministerial expert group and a nationwide study of high-value medicines and medical devices.
