Monday, February 01, 2010 08:00 IST
Ramesh Shankar, Mumbai
The Union cabinet in its meeting recently has approved the proposal of the health ministry for the introduction of the Bill in order to achieve the mandate of Article 47 of the Constitution for improvement in public health. Once the Bill gets the approval of Parliament, initially the law will come into effect in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim and all union territories. It is expected that other states would also adopt this legislation later.
The Bill was to be introduced in the last session of Parliament and in fact it was also included in the legislative business prepared for the last session, but the health ministry could not complete the procedures for the introduction of the Bill.
Even though several states have already enacted laws for regulating health care providers, the general perception is that current regulatory process for healthcare providers in India is inadequate or not responsive to ensure health care services of acceptable quality and prevent negligence.
Presenlty, the supervision and regulation of the quality of services provided by the health care delivery system to the people by both public and private sectors has largely remained a contentious matter and therefore, unresolved issue. The current structure of the healthcare delivery system does not provide enough incentives for improvement in efficiency. The private sector health care delivery system in India has remained largely unregulated and uncontrolled. Problems range from inadequate and inappropriate treatment, excessive use of higher technologies, wastage of scarce resources and problems of medical malpractice and negligence.
Once the law comes into effect, all the clinical establishments in the country have to follow the mandatory registration. As per the Bill, clinical establishment would include hospitals, maternity home, nursing home, dispensary, clinics and similar facilities with beds that offer diagnosis, treatment or care for illness or injury or pregnancy in any recognised system of medicine (Allopathy, Yoga, Naturopathy, Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Siddha and Unani). It also includes any laboratory (either established as independent entity or part of an establishment) which offers pathological, bacteriological, genetic, radiological, chemical, biological and other diagnostic or investigative services. Furthermore, the establishment can be owned by the government or department of the government, a Trust (public or private), a corporation (including a cooperative society), a local authority and a single doctor establishment.
Source: PharmaBiz
