Compliance to Disclosure Norms in the Hospitals of Delhi Pandit A P1,*, Nagarajan Shyama2, Garg Vishal3 1Prof, Symbiosis Institute of Health Sciences, Pune 2Managing Director, Saha Manthran Pvt Ltd 3Symbioses Institute of Health Sciences, Pune *Corresponding Author: Dr (Brig) A P Pandit MD (HA) DNB (H&HA) Prof, Symbiosis Institute of Health Sciences, PUNE-04. Phone: 09423212709 E-mail: apandit70@hotmail.com
Online published on 3 April, 2018. Abstract Medical science has witnessed multiple, wanton, intentional and unintentional negligence by practitioners and health care providers, resulting in patient harm. While, many factors contribute to Medical malpractice at various levels; this study is focused on failures around some of the commonest and easily identifiable malpractices, such as displaying important documents and instructions for the benefit of service users, elaborated under the “Disclosure Requirements”. The intent is to generate evidence that failure to comply with legal requirements in medical practice is ubiquitous. In a country where simplest of the simple legal requirements are not complied with, non-compliance to the critical ones that have larger and deeper consequences is but obvious! For instance, the Delhi Nursing Homes Registration Act, 1953 and MCI Code of Ethics Regulations, 2002 mandates hospitals to display their Registration certificates, Rates and charges of the treatments, Consultation fees and Doctors’ qualification conspicuously in the hospital premises. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess compliance to this simple requirement under law, which expects the hospitals in Delhi, India comply to the Disclosure norms. Methods An observational study of 100 Hospitals was conducted, using a purposive sampling to be able to cover different kinds of facilities to study the compliance to aforementioned Disclosure rule. results Out of the 100 hospitals that were surveyed, none of them fully complied to the requirements of the Disclosure norms. When it came to displaying the Registration Certificates, the Public Hospitals were the main defaulters. 47 out of the 72 Private Hospitals that we resurveyed displayed the qualifications of their doctors. Conclusion Both private and public hospitals were found to be violating the legal requirements. There is need to build a stronger mechanism for enforcing law and ensuring compliance to the legal requirements to curtail medical mal practice, which has become a norm in the medical practice today. Top Keywords Disclosure norms, Registration Certificates, Doctors Qualification, Nursing Homes Registration Act, MCI Code of Ethics Regulations. Top |