Clinical Establishment Act

    In the past, Indian Government has not direct policies on private Hospitals and Doctors, except private hospitals have to fulfill certain terms, set up by government and they were –

• Degrees of Doctors should be registered.
• Scanning centre should be registered.
• If any hospital needs blood, then they are entitle to take blood from regular institutions.
• Doctors comes under consumer act, and medical council has right to check.

Despite above coded norms for private hospitals, government thought that it was not enough and considering to increase the radius of act. Clinical establishments in the country are being run without any standards or ethics for several years in the absence of an effective law. Most of them follow no rules or good medical practices and often indulge in fraud and undesirable activities. Existing Central and state government rules are not specific to these establishments and thus provide several loopholes to indulge in malpractices Day before Yesterday, in the parliament government pass the Clinical Establishment Act quietly, but the implementation of act will give more teeth to government machinery and private hospitals will become victim of exploitation, thus all it create panic among private hospitals and doctors, in the country. In the act there is provision that no clinic run/exist without registration as per health terms. Now private hospitals are bound to have minimum facilities and services’ in their premises itself. In the clinical establishment bill, proposal for constitute of National and state council, which will be watchdog of medical services’. State Governments will appoint district officer, who will be authorize to register health institutions, and its members will be collector and district health officers. As per words of Doctor Yash Sharma, former member of medical council, Punjab, said that to set up private hospitals by doctors it is already a very hard working and tedious task and they face lot of problems, plus it is not easy and viable that private institution become successful as it all depend upon the practice of doctors, and getting rid on all these problems people’s faith on doctors are must. When P.N.D.T. act comes into force then I.M.N. gives its full support, but now it will effect on private institutions doctors. One of the well known Doctor demands from Government that most of representations in National council and state council, should be allotted to doctors. He also add that with minimum standard set up for private hospitals, the cost of treatment will balloon further and it will put additional burden on medium and poor section of society patients.
      There is no doubt that whenever act amended or new act comes into force, because of some additional terms it carries with it, which make uncomfortable to already existing practitioners, they try to vocal against it, in hope that government may relax norms or roll back, but government always consider best for public and add clauses or amend the existing law. With clinical Establishment Act in place, then private hospitals have to abide by the law and expand the facilities in their premises, which will be helpful for patients.