Hospitals to provide patient records within 72 hours
There have been numerous cases in the past where patients have complained that hospitals have been lax in handing over their medical records to them. Hospitals have used this delay as a deterring factor if the patient wants to move to another hospital. In cases where there is a dispute between the patient and the hospital, the patient typically feels that the hospital also uses such delays to get the time to doctor the records. In order to provide the patient with their complete set of medical records fast, the National Consumer Court passed a directive that henceforth hospitals will have to provide either the patient or the authorized representative of the patient, their complete medical records within 72 hours of receiving a request for such records. This judgment is bound to provide relief to patients who would otherwise struggle with trying to get such records from the hospital:
MUMBAI: In a landmark order, the national consumer disputes redressal commission has made it mandatory for all medical practitioners and hospitals across the country to provide the entire medical records of a patient to him\her or the authorised nominee or legal authorities concerned within 72 hours of the demand.
Categories: Consumer, Court, Health, Information, Medical Tags:
Bihar officials fined under RTI Act
Slowly, one can see a greater use of the RTI Act. The RTI Act had been pushed for long as the means to allow citizens to get openness from the bureaucracy (seen for long as a place where things were slow, and where citizens would always have to suffer). The RTI Act was meant to let citizens get information on just about any query under the sun (subject some state secrets, and some commercial secrets). It has been going through fits and starts, with many bemoaning the fact that the babudom is trying their best to thwart the implementation of the law; but as the below examples show, the Act is actually doing good in many cases. People are able to request information, and if the concerned official does not provide the information, then there are provisions of fines being levies for this non-compliance:
PATNA: State information commissioner Mohd Shakeel Ahmad, has imposed a fine of Rs 250 per day with a maximum of Rs 25,000 each against deputy collector, land reforms, Rajgir, and the circle officer of Rajgir for not providing information to an applicant, Sanjay Kumar, seeking information under the provision of Right to Information Act.
Categories: Accountable, Babudom, Bihar, Citizen, Governance, Law, Responsibility, RTI Tags:
Selling off a live army shell
Corruption takes many strange forms, and can cause very strange situations. However, this incident takes the cake. The army has policies for disposal of its ammunition, and those do not allow letting its soldiers walk off with these shells and sell them for their personal benefit. So how do you account for the stupidity of this armyman and the scrap dealer to whom he sold it to?
Three people, including an Armyman, were killed and three others seriously injured when a shell exploded at a scrap dealer’s shop in Punjab’s Muktsar district on Thursday.
Muktsar police chief Gurpreet Singh Gill said the Armyman had taken the shell to the scrap dealer in Mehna village to sell. “When the shopkeeper hit the shell with a hammer, it exploded, killing three people on the spot,” he said.
Categories: Accountable, Army, Punjab Tags:
