New Delhi(PTI): Private hospitals and practitioners will not be able to turn away an emergency patient if a bill drafted by the Law Commission takes the shape of a law.
The Commission in a draft bill on accident victims and emergency patients, which includes expecting women, seeks to make it binding on the hospital or the doctors to admit, stabilise or transfer, if required, to another hospital irrespective of whether victim can pay or has medical insurance or not.
The hospital cannot refuse the accident victim even on the ground that it was a medico-legal case and that it can be attended to only by a designated hospital of the jurisdiction, the draft bill says.
Under Indian laws, the case of a person getting an injury, whether by accident or inflicted, must go through the process of court. Thus, he can be examined and treated only by the designated government hospitals, which are usually few and far between.
The private hospitals turn away such patients as the treatment may be viewed by the court as interference in the process of law.
As a result many a patient battling for life lose it out as he is taken from hospital to hospital, without finding any medical help.
But private hospitals are also routinely turning away patients when they find the patients cannot pay, or does not have an insurance cover.
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