A Velumani, MD of Thyrocare Technologies, does not foresee any direct or evident impact of the GST regime on laboratory services.

Observing that products used by diagnostic and radiology labs are not subject to GST, Velumani said it is “both pain and pleasure”. “For one, we cannot set against input tax credit, and secondly, we pay a tax of 5 per cent and 8 per cent on some items. On such items, we may have to bear a negative impact, but it won’t be much,” he said without quantifying the level of impact.

Velumani, however, added: “All medical businesses would have to restructure their business model in such a way that business per se is not impacted. The entire healthcare industry would probably see a negative impact of 1-2 per cent.”

Asked if healthcare costs would go up, he said: “There is no GST on healthcare services, but all medical establishments have been conducting businesses. Greedy healthcare providers might use GST as a reason for imposing a higher charge.”

“A number of healthcare providers, particularly hospitals, are yet to come out of demonetisation blues,” he said. “Our growth almost doubled during the October- December quarter of 2016 to 29 per cent compared to the industry average of 15 per cent. We did better during the third quarter compared to the preceding quarter.”

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