On February 28, 2010, the Union Cabinet approved the introduction of the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Bill, 2010. The bill is likely to be placed before the Rajya Sabha in the next session of Parliament.
The proposed law will provide a legislative framework for the registration and regulation of clinical establishments. It will also ensure minimum standards of facilities and services and initiate the process of creating a national registry of clinical establishments in the country. The bill will be introduced in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim and all Union Territories. It is to be implemented in other states in due course.
A unique feature of the bill is that it encompasses all clinical establishments including diagnostic facilities.
At present, even though many states have laws reulating health care providers, there is no proper mechanism for ensuring that private medical institutions meet certain standards. A few state-specific laws exist but these have been unable to tackle the problem and instances of bad practice, negligence and low standards are common.
Efforts to formulate a law ensuring minimum standards of care in private medical institutions began in the early 1990s. This was after a patient died in a private nursing home in Mumbai; an inquiry revealed that the patient had been administered a blood transfusion of the wrong blood type, and the doctor in charge of this allopathic institution was a homoeopath practising allopathic medicine. Further investigation of the city's nursing homes revealed that the law to regulate nursing homes was inadequate and also observed only in the breach. The campaign was taken up the MFC Mumbai group and followed up in the media as well as in journals.
Following these efforts and a request from four states for a unified bill for regulation of private health care facilities in those states, a bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2007. This bill has now been approved by the Cabinet after certain revisions, the details of which are not known.
The first step will be to register all medical institutions and to ensure that they adhrere to certain minimum basic standards.
The bill is considered to be the beginning of a long process based on the principle that all medical institutions should be registered and certain minimum standards be maintained in those institutions.
The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics has actively pursued this subject over the years, with at least two editorials on the subject ( http://www.ijme.in/053ed069.html and http://www.ijme.in/163ed108.html )
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