The Allahabad High Court has recently allowed Sanjay Gandhi Hospital in Amethi to continue providing its services, pending inquiry into a patient’s death allegedly due to negligence in treatment.
The bench of Justice Vivek Chaudhary and Justice Manish Kumar, in the order in the plea filed by the Chief Operations Officer of the hospital challenging the suspension of the hospital’s registration, stated that “keeping a hospital dysfunctional during the pendency of an inquiry in case of a single incidence of medical negligence goes against the interest of the public at large”.
The division bench also took judicial note of the fact that medical services in small cities require a major push, and directed the hospital to continue providing hospital services as per its registration conditions as well as further directions/guidelines provided by the CMO/ CMS concerned. “…as there are a limited number of hospitals and doctors available,” it said.
On September 18, the registration of the hospital was suspended after a patient died at the hospital allegedly due to improper treatment. The hospital has also been ordered not to admit any further patient and treat only the patients which were in the hospital.
The hospital challenged the suspension contending that it had been running for the last 40 years in Amethi, providing all types of hospital services with an “unblemished history”.
Before the division bench, the counsel for the petitioner argued that even though no untoward incident has ever happened in the last 40 years, except for only one unfortunate incident, the registration of the hospital has been suspended and stopped from running its operations.
The counsel further asserted that Amethi is a small place where Sanjay Gandhi Hospital is the main hospital for providing such services. In case the registration of same is suspended, the patients would suffer.
“The allegation against the petitioner is that due to negligence, the patient has expired in the hospital. No doubt the same is a serious matter and should be inquired into by the concerned authorities but equally important is of medical service in small cities of the state,” the division bench noted.
Therefore, while stressing that this was not a case where a large number of patients had suffered and negligence had occurred repeatedly, the court stayed the registration suspension order “to balance the interest of public at large and also to maintain fairness in inquiry”.
“The CMO/ CMS concerned is permitted to lay down any further guidelines to the hospital for its proper running to avoid re-occurrence of such incident in future,” the bench ordered.
It further clarified that “the inquiry pending against the hospital shall be continued by the respondents / appropriate authorities in accordance with law and would not be impacted by the pendency of the present writ petition” and posted the matter for further hearing after five weeks.
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