Clinical Establishment bill to be introduced in assembly

The Clinical Establishment Bill aimed to regularise the standards of healthcare by setting up certain norms that have been pending since 2011, will be introduced in the winter session of Maharashtra Legislature Assembly beginning from next month in Nagpur.
Health Minister Deepak Sawant said all hurdles to pave way for passage of the bill in the Legislature have been done away with.
The bill has been pending due to opposition from the Indian Medical Association.
"There will be transparency in the medical profession. Hospitals will have to declare their rate list," he said.
Last year, in view of the opposition, the public health department had set up a committee, comprising doctors and NGOs, to address issues coming in way of implementation of the legislation.

After the committee report was submitted, some changes were made in the draft Bill.

The previous Congress-NCP government had planned to promulgate an ordinance but could not as elections were declared.
The draft bill was modelled on the lines of the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010.
Notably, the state government had no count on the number of existing clinical establishments.
"Registering them (clinical entities) will help the government to keep a check on their functioning and also have a list of practising doctors, nursing homes, pathology centres. The information will be shared with the Centre. The details would be required for formulating health related policies and programmes at a later stage," Sawant said.

Clinical entity is defined as a hospital, maternity home,
nursing home, dispensary, clinic, pathology lab, diagnostic centre - owned, controlled or managed by the government, public or private.
The scope of the draft Bill did not include clinical entities owned, controlled or managed by the Armed Forces and constituted under the Army Act 1950, the Air Force Act 1950 and the Navy Act 1957.
The State Council has to coordinate with the National Council under the proposed Act.
The authority to be set up for each district for registration of clinical establishments will be called District Registering Authority.
It will be authorised to grant, renew, suspend or cancel registration of any clinical establishments, enforce compliance of the provisions and rules of the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010.

Violations of the Act will have penalty levied up to Rs five lakh.