The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), has domesticated the Patients’ Bill of Rights (PBoR) at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada.
The Bill was domesticated at four points in the hospital to ensure full implementation.
Executive vice chairman of FCCPC, Mr Babatunde Irukera, said yesterday that the bill was domesticated also in furtherance of commitment to quality patient care in the country.
Irukera noted that the subject of rights in healthcare is relevant today as it conforms to the global movement towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) which requires that health services are available for all in the first instance.
The executive vice chairman, who commended the hospital as a leading healthcare services provider that has evolved from being a general hospital, to now a teaching hospital, said the management team looked like how a hospital management should be.
He noted that all the Patients Bill of Rights (PBoR) are not only being respected in the hospital but domesticated there though not in a formal document or formal display but apparently in practice, adding that the formal domestication of the PBoR in the hospital would now help them to formalise their contract with their patients.
“You are saying to us as your regulator and also so to your patients and their families that this our pact with you, this is our commitment to how you should be treated and we are putting it out there so that you can hold us accountable to it.
“At the end of the day you are still the backbone of excellence may be not in resource but in skills and capacity and so because of that it doesn’t matter whether you are well resourced or not, we will still expect magic from you , we will expect that the rights of the patient are part of the magic and so while I commiserate with your deficiencies and congratulate you on your accomplishments , I demand of you even more and at every complaint, we will come after you and am sure you will welcome that,” he added.
The executive vice chairman however, advised the management to evolve a feedback mechanism that would enable them track patients’ complaints and address them.
“That feedback will be beneficial meaning that it will help you fix certain things, that to me, is institutional leadership and if you institutionalise certain things, you become a model for others to copy.”
