The Madras High Court recently held that following the promulgation of the Right to Information Act, 2005, government hospitals can no longer withhold information from patients or their attendants.
“Withholding would amount to professional misconduct and result in tortious liability as it constitutes an infringement of the patients’ rights,” observed the bench of Justice GR Swaminathan.
Referring to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Maharaja Agrasen Hospital v. Rishabh Sharma (2020), the single bench said, “All hospitals, whether government or private are liable to maintain the medical records and provide the same to the patient or their attendants within 72 hours of the request and failure to do so constitutes an infringement of the patient’s right”.
The court was dealing with a writ petition pertaining to the death of a newborn child in a government hospital. The mother of the child, a coolie by profession, moved the high court seeking action against the government authorities along with compensation of Rs 15,00,000 for the physical and mental agony incurred by him.
Justice Swaminathan began the 14-page-long judgment by quoting Kaushik Basu, a well-known economist, and Chief Economic Advisor in the government in 2009, from his book ‘Policymaker’s Journal’.
In the book, Basu recounts his experience when he went to the state-run Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, New Delhi, in 2010 to obtain the mandatory medical fitness certificate.
Justice Swaminathan wrote, “If this could be the experience of a top bureaucrat reporting directly to the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, one can imagine the fate of the lakhs of ordinary poor patients thronging the portals of government hospitals”.
He noted that in the matter at hand, the allegation of the petitioner was that the child had died due to medical negligence and when she sought related information under the provisions of the Right to Information Act, 2005, it was not given.
The claim of the petitioner was that the child was born dead but to avoid controversy, she was referred to one hospital after another, and her medical records had been withheld.
It was her main contention that if a caesarean operation had been performed on her, the child would have been saved.
Though Justice Swaminathan did not find merit in petitioner’s allegations and claims against the hospital staff or the doctors who had treated her, he highlighted that the petitioner’s medical records had been stated to be missing by the hospital.
“I am not able to appreciate the defence taken. If the information had been stored digitally, it would have been possible to retrieve and access them at any point of time,” wrote the judge while holding that failure to furnish information by the authorities of the concerned government hospital did constitute an infringement of the petitioner’s right.
Therefore, he partly allowed the writ petition and held the petitioner entitled to a compensation of Rs 75,000 to be paid by the Department of Health and Family Welfare of the state government.
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