Cause of death: Failure to pay hospital deposit

There is none more disconcerting than to hear a hospital refusing to admit a patient for failing to pay the deposit or given an advance payment. It makes one’s blood boil especially if the patient would not have died or become permanently disabled had he not been deprived of immediate medical treatment.

This practice by not a few hospitals of requiring advance payment or deposit unfortunately has become a major immediate cause of death for many emergency cases. In the past the same was prevalent and has gone unchecked. It is not as much today.

In fact, as early as 1984, Batas Pambansa Blg. 702 already prohibited hospitals from demanding deposits or advance payment as a prerequisite for the confinement or treatment of emergency or serious cases. To be considered an emergency case, the patient should be in immediate danger and any delay in giving initial support and treatment may lead to his death or permanent disability. On the other hand, a serious case is one where a patient may die or be crippled for life if left unattended to.

Unfortunately, the enactment of BP 702 did not deter hospitals from discontinuing this putrid practice. Circumventing it was easy. For instance, if the patient could not pay the deposit, the hospital was prudent enough not to deny admittance outright to avoid criminal liability, but would declare to the patient or his kin the inadequacy of the hospital’s facilities to treat him and that he would be better off if he is transferred to one that is supposedly well-equipped. Naturally, with this declaration, the patient’s relatives would no longer insist on having him treated by that hospital. Unfortunately, the patient would be dead by the time he is taken to another hospital.

Congress recognized the problem. In 1997, RA 8344 was passed to require the hospital to which the patient is first brought to administer the necessary emergency treatment and support to stabilize him before he is transferred. And if a transfer is actually necessary, the same may only be done if the patient’s next of kin consents and the receiving hospital agrees and, more importantly, the transfer will entail less risk to the patient than his continued confinement.

The new law, however, has a different provision for poor or indigent patients. Although the hospital is still mandated to give the necessary emergency treatment and support in case of emergency or serious cases, but as soon as the patient’s condition stabilizes, the hospital may transfer him to a government hospital even without his or next of kin’s consent.

Hospitals are business enterprises engaged in providing healthcare. Their aim is to earn profit to modernize their facilities and pay their personnel. But more than anything, they are symbols of life, a place of healing and compassion. It may be run like any other business establishment, but it should not lose sight of the real purpose for its being.

Atty. Bragais may be reached at Paz St., San Francisco, Naga City, tel. No. (054) 4725460.