According to the new draft rules issued by the state public health department, patients cannot be detained for non-payment of hospital bills.

The draft rules were issued in July to amend the Nursing Home Registration Rules in Maharashtra that “under no circumstances, a dead body be withheld for non-payment of hospital bill or any other reason”.

On Wednesday, Government lawyer Prajakta Shinde furnished the draft rules before Bombay HC bench of Justices Ranjit More and M S Karnik, which was hearing a PIL filed in 2014 by Sanjay Prajapati. He was detained in a hospital for not paying medical bills, along with a bunch of similar petitions.

The Association of Medical Consultants, which represents nursing homes across Maharashtra were surprised and said it was unaware of these draft rules. The draft rules provide for grievance redressal to patients and is “one-sided”, argued the association’s counsel, Rui Rodrigues. She said that a balance needs to be struck for hospitals that are burdened with unpaid bills. However, the deadline had ended in November, the HC gave the association two weeks to file objections and suggestions.

The public health department had got the draft rules for nursing homes following an October 2018 order of the HC bench of then Chief Justice Naresh Patil and Justice Girish Kulkarni in a PIL on a similar issue. The HC had, in that order, directed the department to give a status update on the Maharashtra Clinical Establishment (Registration and Regulation) Bill, the Bombay Nursing Homes Registration Rules, 2006, and whether any survey was conducted to find out the number of registered licensed nursing homes, and any necessary steps were taken against unregistered ones.

In October 2016 of Prajapati’s PIL, the HC bench of Justices V M Kanade and Swapna Joshi had observed that the court has entertained the PIL to “find a solution to the problem of non-payment of medical bills and the resultant action of detention of such patient or even a corpse, if patient dies”.

On Wednesday, Rodrigues said that after deliberations between the director of health services and other stakeholders in October 2016, the Kanade-Joshi bench had recommended that a grievance redressal forum should be set up for both patients and hospitals, however the draft rules exclude the rights of nursing homes.

Source: ET Healthworld