Bengaluru: The expert committee constituted to sugget changes in the Karnataka Private Medical Establishment Act, has submitted its proposals to the government.
The committee headed by retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Vikramjit Sen held a final meeting and prepared the draft.
According to principal secretary, health and family welfare department, Shalini Rajneesh, “Since the meeting happened today, fine tuning of the report will be done on the next working day.”
One of the major changes that the committee has suggested is removing the word ‘private’ from the name of the Act.
Justice Sen while speaking to reporters, said, “We would like to make government hospitals too accountable. Therefore, by deleting the word, private we would be able to achieve this.”
However, many NGOs like Karnataka Janaarogya Chaluvali and Alternative Law Forum maintained that the draft was heavily biased in favour of private hospitals and the drafting committee had not included references to protection of patient rights.
But Ms Rajneesh claimed that the Non-Governmental Organisatios’ suggestion on the patient charter was duly endorsed and it would be part of the draft legislation.
According to Justice Sen, all streams of medical practices, allopathy, ayurveda, yoga unani Sidda and homeopathy would be brought under the Act.
