University Teaching Hospital domesticates Patients’ Bills of Rights

BINTU JIDDA KANEMPRESS

13 JULY, 2023

The Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, in Northeast Bauchi state, has domesticated the Patients’ Bills of Rights (PBoR).

Speaking at the domestication on Wednesday at the Teaching Hospital, the Executive Vice Chairman of Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) which pushed for its domestication, Babatunde Irukare commended the management of the University Teaching hospital for domesticating the bill.

Irukare expressed optimism that the patients bill of rights will help to strengthen the respect for the rights of patients who hardly get prompt attention.

Irukare, said the regulatory framework which compels compliance, said that failure to comply with the rights of patients has multi-faceted consequences.

“There could be the following consequence: prosecution, withdrawal of license, fine, sealing of the facility, etc” he warned

Continuing Irukare said “What the FCCPC has sought to do is to reset that button and catalyze the process where those rights are highlighted,”

“There are two sides of the divide. The providers and all their stakeholders within the providing community, all their collaborators and auxiliary operatives, and also to the patients themselves”

He said that the most critical component of any rights enforcement is the patient, who knows his or her rights and is willing to demand those rights by insisting on them.

“The second most important component is the provider and every operative of the provider who also knows those rights,” he stated.

Irukare said every provider is therefore expected to recognise the obligations of those patients and set up an apparatus to respect and comply with those rights.

“If these two exist, about 80 percent of patients’ rights, for the most part, are already known to be complied with.”

In his remarks, Chief Medical Director, CMD of the ATBUTH, Professor Yusuf Jibrin Bara, said the domestication of the Patient’s Bills of Rights by the hospital was important to its services to members of the public.

Bars pledged the commitment of the hospital to ensure that the patient’s rights were protected and to improve on the gains made.

“I am happy to tell the Executive Vice Chairman and his team that this hospital is trying its best. The staff and students are conducting themselves ethically.”