Erwida Maulia, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 09/28/2009 9:12 PM
The House of Representatives passed the hospital bill into law Monday, granting the government the authority to oversee private hospitals and revoke their licenses in case of violations.
Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said the new law would provide better protection for patients’ rights to health services at hospitals.
“This is a breakthrough. With the law, we will now be able to regulate and oversee hospitals across Indonesia, including private and foreign-owned hospitals, if the latter are established later on,” Siti said.
“All hospitals will have to comply with our regulations.”
Siti denied allegations the hospital law would benefit private hospitals, saying it in fact provided stronger ground for the regulation of hospitals in Indonesia.
“We used to only have a ministerial regulation [to regulate hospitals]; now this is strengthened by the law,” she said.
“And obviously the government can now supervise and discipline hospitals. Formerly, we could not do so. And besides, the spirit of the law is to protect patients, not hospitals.”
The Health Ministry’s inspector general, Faiq Bahfen, said the hospital law outlined disciplinary measures for hospitals that violated existing regulation, including bringing them up on criminal articles and even revoking their operating licenses, depending on the case.
0 comments:
Post a Comment