State can’t shift onus of healthcare to private hospitals: Bombay HC

The Bombay High Court on Friday observed that the Maharashtra government cannot shift the burden of ensuring public healthcare on to private hospitals, and directed the filling up of various vacancies in the state healthcare system.

The observations by a bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Arif Doctor came while hearing a suo motu public interest litigation taken up in the wake of a series of patient deaths in several government-run hospitals in Maharashtra this week, specifically Nagpur, Nanded, Thane and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.

State advocate-general Dr Birendra Saraf said the load on government hospitals often increases owing to referrals from private or smaller hospitals, and extremely critical patients are brought to state-run facilities.

However, public hospitals cannot turn any patient away and try to accommodate everyone, while private hospitals don’t adhere to norms for patient referrals, and there is a heavy inflow into public hospitals, which increases their burden, he contended.

At this, the court opined that the state government cannot shift its burden to private players.

Saraf further submitted that all medicines and medical equipment needed by hospitals are made available to patients and issued as per protocol, and though there are problems, there was no gross negligence that could have led to the patient deaths.

The court responded by saying that while everything may be "in place on paper", it was important that everything also works at the ground level, as it pertained to the general condition of healthcare in the state.

After going through the preliminary reports of various vacancies submitted by the state, including junior doctors (52), senior medicos (48), a head for procuring medical supplies, etc, the court directed that a regular CEO under the Maharashtra Medical Goods Procurement Authority Act must be appointed within two weeks.