Villar files bill prohibiting ‘detention’ of hospital patients

Keeping a patient in the hospital too long could soon become illegal.

If Senate President Pro Tempore Manuel Villar Jr. has his way, the common practice of detaining patients who are unable to pay their bills upon discharge from hospitals and other medical institutions will be prohibited.

In filing Senate Bill 2234, Villar said the rights of indigent patients must be protected from the medical malpractice of prolonging their confinement until they come up with the money to settle their hospital bills.

It has become a common practice in Philippine hospitals to prolong the confinement of patients unable to settle their bills. Such patients are only discharged from medical facilities once their bills are paid in full.

For patients whose confinement is prolonged this way, each passing day in confinement means a day’s earnings lost and, in some cases, the loss of their jobs if they are daily wage earners.

Many indigents live from day to day and their loss of income through such prolonged confinement may drag them deeper in a financial mire, thus rendering them less capable of paying the hospitals where they are confined.

Villar said of this common hospital practice: "This is simply an act of detention, which is an act against the will of the patients. (It is a) legally and morally unacceptable act."

The bill, once passed, will allow underprivileged patients to leave the hospital after executing a duly secured promissory note covering the unpaid obligation.

Villar said that while the rights of hospital owners and medical practitioners must be respected, there must be a better and more humane way of treating patients who have been adequately attended to and who are well enough to leave the hospital.

"To the financially incapable patient, it is a matter of liberty and livelihood. To the hospital and medical practitioners, it simply means a financial sacrifice," Villar said.