Bill to ban hospitals from rejecting patients

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A bill is being drafted to allow the government to fine or prosecute hospitals refusing to treat patients, particularly the poor.

"In the proposed bill, hospitals will be prohibited from refusing to treat patients for any reason," Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari said on Monday.

"If they reject a patient, they will face criminal prosecution," he added.

The minister said the government hoped to submit the hospital services bill to the House of Representatives in November for deliberation.

The new bill is aimed at preventing a repeat of what happened last month when a two-week-old baby, Muhammad Zulfikri, was denied treatment for jaundice by six hospitals in Jakarta, which cited either fears of non-payment or a lack of space.

After almost 11 hours of being bounced around from one hospital to another, Zulfikri was eventually admitted by the privately-run Harapan Bunda Hospital in East Jakarta. Now his health is improving had he has been discharged.

Five of the six hospitals that refused to treat Zulfikri were the Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Gatot Subroto Army Hospital, Budhi Asih Hospital, Mintohardjo Hospital and Harapan Kita Hospital. All of them are either run by the government or the Indonesian Military.

The sixth hospital is run by the Indonesian Christian University.

Supari said that under the law as it stood at the moment, the Ministry of Health was powerless to impose sanctions, save for verbal reprimands, on hospitals that rejected patients for financial reasons.

The minister called on everybody who had experience of cavalier treatment from a hospital, or who wanted to make suggestions, to text her at 9611.

She said she had decided to launch this service as public complaints about medical services and other health issues took too long to reach her desk.

"This gives the public the impression that the health ministry is always tardy or is doing nothing at all," Supari added.

Aside from the requiring hospitals not to turn away patients, the proposed bill will also deal with the organizing, funding and classification of hospitals.

It also aims at provide more clarity on how hospitals are supposed to provide care and treatment to the more than 60 million poor people whose medical care is guaranteed by the government under the national health insurance scheme.

However, Supari conceded that the government often had problems in identifying who was actually eligible for free medical treatment.

"It seems that a lot of health cards have been handed out to the wrong people," she said.