Last October the Supreme Court of India came out with a significant judgement awarding a record Rs 5.96 crore compensation in a medical negligence case to a US-based NRI doctor, Kunal Saha, who has been fighting a 15-year battle on four doctors and Kolkata's AMRI hospital for the death of his wife Anuradha in 1998. The court held the doctors guilty of negligence in treating Anuradha, who had contracted a rare skin disease during the course of treatment. The patient was found to have died on account of complications from bad diagnosis and an overdose of steroid that was administered at the Kolkata hospital. By delivering this judgement the Supreme Court has set a milestone in compensation in medical negligence cases in India. The apex court observed that the cases of medical negligence is on the rise in India with the unregulated growth and commercialization of healthcare services. The Supreme Court order has sent ripples across the Indian healthcare sector and at the same time has given some hope to the patient community in the country. The historic judgement by the apex court has also shaken up the government and the concerned agencies as they have been rather ignoring medical negligence cases in India.
There is no system of centralised collection of data on negligence cases filed in India or their outcome with the Union government. This has been admitted by the Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad himself recently. He stated that the health being a state subject no such information was maintained centrally and no data was available on deaths caused by medical errors in the country. State Medical Councils and the Medical Council of India (MCI) are expected to maintain registers of all complaints filed against doctors, their status and the outcome of such complaints. But, the MCI has not yet attempted to put together such critical regional data to build a central database for the nation. The matter has drawn the attention of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health which in its 73rd report on the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill 2013 expressed serious concern over the increasing incidents of negligence on the part of doctors. Although MCI is the regulatory body governing medical practice, whatever few cases brought before the Council are not impartially decided as the Council members are very lenient towards their colleagues guilty of negligence and hardly anyone is willing to testify the other doctor as negligent. Obvious outcome of the current arrangement is that the percentage of prosecution in medical negligence cases by the MCI is negligible denying justice to the patients. Therefore, cases of medical negligence and violation of code of ethics by the doctors should be undertaken by a team involving outside personnel also such as social activists, medico legal experts, senior medical practitioners, patient representatives, etc. and not just members of the MCI. Only such an arrangement can ensure payment of adequate compensation in time to the patients and their relatives.