Dr. MC Gupta, a doctor turned lawyer, guides with the help of guidelines the procedure that needs to be followed while discharging a patient from the hospital and how to prevent a situation where a patient claims he became ill at home because he was discharged before full recovery, despite mutual consent having been received before.

What are the guidelines for discharging the patient from hospital? What if patient gets ill once again at home and then claims that he was discharged before full recovery, when, in the first place, discharge was done with mutual consent between doctor and patient’s relatives? How to prevent such situation?

ANSWER:

1—There are no special guidelines about discharging the patient except saying that the discharge paper should not be a simple statement saying that the patient is being discharged but, rather, it should be in the form of a complete and detailed discharge summary containing the history, physical findings, results of investigations, nature of treatment given and the course in the hospital, as well as instructions to be followed after discharge. A copy should be retained by the hospital and the signatures of the patient/ relatives should be taken on it.

2—A detailed discharge summary as above needs to be given in LAMA cases (Discharge on request) also. If the relatives refuse to sign on the copy retained by the hospital, this fact along with two witnesses should be duly recorded therein.

3—No problems of the type mentioned above will be faced if the above guidelines are followed.

To read Dr. MC Gupta's other article on patient discharge, click What is the difference between DOR, DAMA, LAMA, and Absconded?

Disclaimer- The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of M3 India.

Content from the writer has been directly replicated on the website. No edits have been made.

The writer, Dr. MC Gupta is a practising lawyer specialising in medical negligence cases. He also has an MD Medicine from AIIMS, Delhi where he also worked as a faculty member for 18 years, later working another 10 years as a Professor and Dean at National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi, before pursuing law.