Legalities and Challenges in Implementing the Charter of Patients’ Rights to Telemedicine in India: A Medico-Legal Analysis

Patient rights are a part of basic human rights. They outline the minimum standards of care any patient should expect from healthcare institutions, doctors and supporting staffs during the course of treatment. While most Indian laws and judicial perspective focus on protecting the doctors to enable them to fearlessly treat patients without constantly worrying about the consequences, laws have not been vocal in fortifying patients’ rights on par with it. This imbalance puts patients at a disadvantage and in a democratic country and welfare state like India this is unacceptable. The National Human Rights Commission codified various facets of human rights into the Charter of Patients’ Rights, 2021 to reinforce the patients’ power to enforce their rights and seek redressal and legal remedy if their rights are violated. The Government of India instead of uniformly adopting it across the entire country asked the states to individually adopt the same as health is a subject under the State List. Thus patients’ rights charters have been adopted by different states with different levels of success in protecting patients using the traditional in-person healthcare system. Telemedicine has been practised in various forms in India for long and post Covid-19 its popularity has skyrocketed. It has been given legal recognition through Telemedicine Practitioner Guidelines, 2020, but the Guideline is silent about patient rights and protection. This research paper suggests that the rights guaranteed to the traditional patients must be extended to patients of telemedicine also. Additionally their digital rights in the tele-medium must also be secured to ensure holistic patient protection and improving their confidence in telemedicine, which is the future of healthcare.