Bring Private Hospitals Under RTI Scanner

Indian Express: Chennai: Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Bringing all private hospitals under the ambit of the Right To Information (RTI) Act may reduce cases of medical negligence, feel experts.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) had recently directed the Union and State governments to bring private hospitals under RTI to ensure that they provide medical records of patients on a daily basis.

Speaking on the same, Nirmala Desikan, chairman and managing trustee, Consumers’ Association of India said, “Now, private hospitals are not accountable to the government unless some major legal issues happen. If the State notifies this, it will be helpful to patients.”

The association, in the past one year, has dealt with three cases of medical negligence. When there is transparency, medical negligence cases may also reduce.

A majority of the people who can afford to go to private hospitals would be shattered if something were to go wrong or they couldn’t find answers for their questions. If these hospitals were brought under the RTI, then people would come to know a lot of realities in the way that most of these hospitals function, she added.

However, Dr Meena Umachander, former director of Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Egmore, now a consultant at a private hospital, said that the patients coming to corporate hospitals were from the upper middle class and higher socio-economic groups, and thus well-educated. Most of the corporate hospitals do explain to them their health condition. Hence, the RTI Act would not bring any big difference.

S Elango, former director of  the Public Health Department and current president of the India Public Health Association said, “Bringing private hospitals under the RTI Act means making them accountable and transparent. It will be helpful for the government to know how most of these hospitals function and make policy changes. Most of the private hospitals do not provide a detailed discharge summary to the patient. Through RTI, the patient will be able to get whatever details he or she wants, including the cost of the treatment.”

T Jasmine Gandhimathi, a resident of Royapettah said, “Most of these private hospitals perform unnecessary tests on patients since they are not answerable, but once they are brought under the RTI scanner, this will change. They will then have to explain why a particular surgery was performed on a patient and the treatment procedure and so on.”