Patients' rights are one of the most important in the field of human rights, which are known today from numerous international treaties. The European Charter of Patients' Rights, better known as the Rome Charter, was created in 2002 in Rome. It was ratified in Brussels on the same day and thus became the fundamental document for healthcare reform in the countries of the European Union. Its second chapter, which lists 14 patients' rights, is an integral part of the European Constitution. Since 2007, 18 April has been marked as European Patients' Rights Day.
Patients' rights, defined by the European Charter, are:
1. Right to preventive measures - everyone has the right to appropriate services for the purpose of disease prevention. 2. Right to accessibility - Everyone has the right to access health services, in accordance with their health needs. Everyone is guaranteed equal access to health services, without discrimination based on financial status, place of residence, or type of illness. 3. Right to information - everyone has the right to access all information related to their health status, health services and how to use them, and the opportunities offered by scientific research and new technologies. 4. Right to consent - everyone has the right to all information that enables them to actively participate in decision-making about their own health. Such information is a requirement for every procedure and intervention for the purpose of treatment. 5. The right to free choice - everyone, based on available information, has the right to free choice between different procedures and interventions, and between healthcare providers. 6. Right to privacy and confidentiality - everyone has the right to confidentiality of personal data, including that about their health condition and possible diagnoses or therapeutic procedures. 7. The right to respect for the patient's time - everyone has the right to receive necessary health services within the shortest possible and pre-scheduled time frame. 8. Law to control quality standards - everyone has the right to high-quality health care, evaluated according to clearly defined standards. 9. Right to security - everyone has the right to safety from harm caused by poor organization of health services, professional negligence and error, as well as the right to access high safety standards. 10. Right to innovation - everyone has the right to access innovative procedures, including diagnostic procedures, in accordance with international standards, regardless of financial circumstances. 11. Right to avoiding unnecessary suffering and pain - everyone has the right to be protected from unnecessary suffering and pain, as far as possible, at every stage of their illness. 12. Right to individual approach - everyone has the right to an individually tailored diagnostic or therapeutic procedure. 13. Right to complain - everyone has the right to complain in the event of a violation of their rights, and the right to receive a response or feedback to their complaint. 14. Right to compensation - everyone has the right to adequate compensation within a reasonable time in the event of physical, ethical or psychological harm suffered, caused by health services.
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948, the Rome Charter and the Montenegrin Law on Patients' Rights are no barrier to the violation of patients' rights in our permanently neglected healthcare system. Hard-to-access healthcare, not only in rural areas, crowds in inadequate waiting rooms of healthcare institutions, long waiting lists for specialist and sub-specialist examinations, lack of diagnostic equipment, insufficient number of medical doctors... and many other factors, result in a long journey to diagnosis and the start of, sometimes delayed, treatment. Patients are forced to use very expensive services in private healthcare institutions (PZU), which employ a large number of doctors whose examinations we are waiting for in public healthcare. We can only dream of preventive examinations...
The failed reform of primary health care has brought this most important sector of health care into chaos. Elected doctors (IDs) complain that working on computers reduces their time for dealing with patients. Before computerization, doctors manually entered data into medical records and wrote prescriptions, so they had enough time for patients. There were few general medicine specialists, and patients were more satisfied than today. There are also those IDs who, of their own free will, devote more time to administration, while patients are, by the way, “couriers” on the route from IDs to specialists and vice versa, which is a walk in the park for the elderly and infirm, and all patients are “infirm”. By prescribing therapy, at any level of health care, without insight into the patient’s general health condition (without talking to him), several patients’ rights are simultaneously violated. It happens that doctors force their therapy, regardless of contraindications and harmful interactions, which can be fatal for the elderly and people with multiple chronic diseases!
All errors, to the detriment of patients and medical staff, are considered "systemic", and nothing is done to improve the situation or, at least, adapt to the functioning of healthcare in "emergency circumstances", which have lasted for decades. Scheduling an appointment at the ID hardly alleviates the problem of waiting. "Regular" patients wait for an appointment for up to a week, while those without an appointment, most often, see a doctor on the same day. They "connect" within the same hour (or minute)! In the KCCG, they deal with SMS messages, instead of trying to adapt the work of clinics to the existing conditions...
Patient rights advocates are appointed by directors of healthcare institutions, which is reason enough that only a few patients file complaints about violations of their rights!
Bonus video:
