No display of costs? Law to let patients sue Tamil Nadu doctors, hospitals

CHENNAI: After having to pay up for slapdash treatment and even horribly botched operations, patients in the state can soon sue doctors and hospitals for failure to clearly specify how much they will have to pay for every procedure, scan and test.


The Tamil Nadu government, a senior health official said, is preparing to pass legislation in the next assembly session that allows patients to file criminal cases against hospitals for failing to display cost of diagnosis, treatment, and diagnostic tests such as MRIs and other scans as well as medical ‘packages’ — the practice of bundling various charges for single patients.



The legislation, which will allow the state to enforce the Tamil Nadu Private Clinical Establishment Act, 1997, will also apply to state-run hospitals. Patients will, for instance, be able to force the government to take action against doctors who are not available during their duty hours at primary health centres.


The state will place the proposed statute as an amendment to the two-decade-old act, which made it mandatory for all private hospitals, clinics, scan centres and labs to register with the government to provide any service, the health official said.




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Chennai: “Though the act has been in force, the government did notimplement itbecauseof vehement opposition from the private sector,” he said.


“We discussed the amendment with doctors’ associations and senior physicians,” the official said. “By including government hospitals under its ambit, wehope toencourage the private sector [to comply with the rules].”


The amendment includes eligibility norms for hospitals and guidelinesto gradethem as clinics, nursing homes or hospitals, depending on their facilities and services, a doctor who helped draft it said.


Several states notified rules for hospital registrations but TamilNaduwas a holdout. The government speeded up work on a law to regulatehospitalsin 2016, after the Madras high court, hearing the May 2015 deathof medical student P Santhosh Kumar following a botched hair transplant in a Chennai salon, asked officials why thestatehad not yetimplemented such a law. Neither the Nungambakkam salon nor the doctors there had permission for the procedure.


A law would have ensured that such procedures are safer, the court said.


Doctors’ associations welcomed the move. “If doctors or hospitals engage a quack, they face action,” state medical council head N Senthil said.