Consumer Right: FCCPC commends UATH for domestication of Patients Bill

The Federal Competition & Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has commended the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH) for the domestication of the Patients Bill of Rights.

Speaking in Abuja at the formal presentation of the domestication of the Bill at the UATH, the Executive Vice Chairman of the FCCPC, Babatunde Irukera applauded the hospital for involving all units of the institution in the management Team.

He explained that domestication of the Parents Bill of Rights is a big deal. “For me to hear you say you have domesticated the Bill,we say congratulations.

“By domesticating the Bill, you are saying to the patients and us as regulators that, this is our commitment to how you should be treated and we are putting it out there so you can hold us accountable to it”.

Irukera said the strongest accountability framework in the world is the disclosure to the people you own an obligation to, “the totality of that obligation and the standard threshold  that you must meet in fulfilling that obligation” he stated.

Some of the key points of the Patients Bill of Rights is the right to relevant information in a language and manner the patients understand, including diagnosis, treatment, other procedures and possible outcome.

Right to timely access to detailed and accurate medical records and available services. The right to transparent billing and full disclosure of any cost, including recommended treatment plans. Right to privacy, and confidentiality of medical records amongst others.

While receiving the team from the FCCPC, the Chief Medical Director of UATH, Prof. Bissallah A. Ekele said patients wellbeing means alot to the hospital.

Represented by the Director Clinical Services, Dr. Bob Ukonu, Ekele stated that “we have been making frantic efforts to make sure that patients are not only treated here but every thing that is needed to make them comfortable in the cause of their treatment is being given to them. 

“Today I have looked at the 12 items in the Patients’ Bill of Rights and I can comfortably and confidently tell you that this 12 items have been properly domesticated in our institution, there is no aspect of it that will have not painstakingly taken care of”he noted.

Initially, UATH was established as a general hospital that was to serve a very small community then. But in 1992 by the decree of the them military Head of state, Gen Ibrahim Babaginda Rtd, it became a specialist hospital, the capacity was to accommodate 350 patients.

However, in 2006 the then President Olusegun Obasanjo  accented to a Bill that upgraded the Specialist hospital to University of Abuja Teaching Hospital.