Centre introduces uniform hospital bill for improving transparency in healthcare expenses
Doctor
New Delhi: Aiming to provide the patients with a clearer disclosure and itemised breakdown of charges, India's national standards body has introduced a uniform, but voluntary hospital bill format, Telegraph India has reported.
This new format has been introduced amid long-standing concerns about high opacity levels in hospital bills across the country, and it seeks to establish a common benchmark for clarity and accountability in billing.
According to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the newly introduced format will apply to all healthcare institutions, including hospitals, nursing homes, diagnostic clinics, and outpatient clinics.
As per the latest media report by The Telegraph India, the BIS said that the widespread public concern about inconsistent and unclear billing practices by hospitals contributed "to confusion, disputes and diminished accountability". Amid this, the new Indian Standard (IS-19493:2025) for hospital bills has been introduced. Under this, the bills will need to provide a breakdown into components such as room rent, doctors’ fees, medicines and diagnostics.
Further, there will be a requirement to itemise the consultation charges for doctors by doctor and date, while surgery charges will need to be broken down into surgeon's and anaesthesia charges, operation theatre charges, and any other charges billed. Meanwhile, the diagnostic charges would also need to specify each test charged and the quality and charge of each medicine would be required to be specified in the cases of medicine prices.
BIS mentioned that the uniform standard seeks to facilitate easy understanding of charges for patients through a consistent and user-friendly billing format and to standardise billing formats across healthcare organisations to minimise discrepancies and disputes.
Last year in April. a nationwide survey conducted by an online social media platform found that more than half of the respondents had not received itemised details of services, facilities, or consumables charged in their hospital bills. The survey, conducted by Local Circles, had also revealed that aming the 12,000 respondents from over 300 districts, only 47 per cent had received bills showing the charges broken up across services, facilities, and consumables.
Further, it had also pointed out that around 10 percent of the respondents had said that their bills lacked proper details and the charges were labelled as "package charges".
However, under the standard format, the hospitals will be required to provide package details and the bills would also need to show the total amount, discounts or concessions, advance amounts paid, payment modes and receipt numbers.
Commenting on the matter, Sachin Taparia, founder of Local Circles, told Telegraph India, "The standards are voluntary for now — but over time, they are expected to become mandatory."
Medical Dialogues had previously reported that earlier this year, aiming to standardize the process of hospital billing, the Central Government had plans to release a format for hospital bills that would apply to all clinical establishments including hospitals, nursing homes, and diagnostic centres.
The process to set up this format was initiated last year by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to standardize and enhance transparency in the billing process of all healthcare centers.
