New registration laws detrimental to small nursing homes, says expert

NAGPUR: Easing the process for registration of nursing homes was the main agenda of a discussion held on ‘The fate of small nursing homes’ on Sunday, held as part of the concluding day of IMA’s annual conference.

Presiding over the discussion, Dr Anand Kate shared difficulties in adhering to Maharashtra Nursing Home Registration Act. “Only doctors are mandated to ensure

fire safety

even if the commercial building housing their clinic has other offices too. Fire safety system needs to be installed in the entire building. If the nursing home is not registered, patients will not be able to receive their insurance claims,” said Dr Kate during the discussion which was also attended by additional municipal commissioner Ravindra Thakre.

Dr Kate also pointed out other aspects of the act such as parking, installing sewage treatment plant and yearly renewal of registrations, and added that the costs have to be ultimately borne by the patients. Thakre said he would support proposals for relaxation of norms.

Dr Rupali Patil pointed out towards insufficient trained staff while talking about problem faced by hospitals in rural areas.

“New laws are detrimental to small nursing homes. Clinical Establishment Act, 2010, had made it impossible for small nursing homes to exist. However, a team of doctors collaborated with the state government to make the Act Maharashtra specific. The final draft is ready to be passed in the parliament,” said Dr Shivkumar Utture, chairman of Maharashtra Medical Council.

He further said, “Association of medical consultants in Mumbai have been able to get the administration change rules and demand a single window for registration of nursing homes. We need to be proactive as an organization to bring required changes.”

Dr Utture also said that doctors were forced to join the Ayushman Bharat scheme at low rates.

Earlier in the day, advances in

oncology

were discussed by Dr Bharat Vaswani. Dr Ghourdas Choudhari delivered Dr

Sushila Nayyar

Hepatology Oration on ‘Battling hepatitis: from the lab to the street’.

Recent advances in robotic surgery were discussed by Dr Abhinav

Deshpande

while Dr Atul Rewatkar spoke on ‘Varicose Veins’ among others. Debates were held on a range of topics including ‘Group practice in medical profession’, ‘MeToo campaign’, ‘Usefulness of NABH for general population’ and ‘Dixit vs Diwekar diet’.