Activists punch holes in clinical establishment bill

PUNE: Exclusion of a number of key provisions from the draft Maharashtra Clinical Establishment Bill have not gone down well with several health activists.
The bill aims at regulating healthcare-service rates by private hospitals across the state. The activists have taken a dig at the state-constituted committee for dropping the provisions meant for safeguarding the patients’ rights.

The provisions included display of charter of a patient’s rights, such as getting itemized bills, and responsibilities at prominent place on hospital premises.

In the last winter session of the Assembly in December 2017, health minister Deepak Sawant had pledged to bring in alaw to curb “unjustified profiteering” by hospitals. Accordingly, Jan Arogya Abhiyan, a network of NGOs working in the field of health, proposed inclusion of the word “affordable care” in the preamble of the draft bill.

“A private hospital in Mumbai was recently found charging huge amount of money for hundreds of gloves not possible to utilize by any stretch of logic. It was also reported that hospital had charged food bill for a patient on ventilator,” activist Abhijit More said, itemized bills for a patient is a must.

The acivists also wanted the state government to come up with website with detailed information about registered hospitals, laboratories, their facilities and services and the charges. “Citizens should be able to cmpare these information at single click,” More said.

The activists said an instance of a hospital overcharging than the declared charges for facilities, services and packages, it should be considered an offence under the Act and the health hub should be penalized.

The Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010 was enacted by the Central Government to provide for registration and regulation of all clinical establishments in the country with a view to prescribe the minimum standards of facilities and services provided by them.