The Plenary of the Senate of the Republic unanimously approved reforms that oblige health service providers to guarantee greater transparency and information for the patient regarding the medical services they acquire, prices and treatments and drug costs.
What is the new health services reform about?
Providers are obliged to provide patients, at the time of admission, by electronic or printed means. As well as the detail of prices and services applied and include them at the end as an annex to the invoice.
The draft decree reforms various provisions to the General Health Law, for public and private health service providers. Including independent personal service and auxiliary diagnostic services. They must publish the prices of their current services at the point of entry of the patient and, where appropriate, in the news media.
With 85 votes in favor, it was approved unanimously
With 85 votes in favor, it was approved unanimously, and requires giving patients all the information necessary for better decision-making regarding their health. Not only with regard to information on the efficacy and risk of treatments. But the specific procedures that each treatment entails, approximate amount on prices and the existence of substitute therapies.
According The Sun of Mexico, With the modifications, it is also intended to have a system of quality indicators for the National Health System. Established by the Ministry of Health and on medical care. Health service providers may rely on the Clinical Practice Guidelines and protocols that must be permanently updated. As well as in Information and Communication Technologies.
Healthcare privatization should not be a threat to availability
In his speech, the president of the Health Commission, Américo Villarreal Anaya, pointed out that the privatization of healthcare should not be a threat to the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of services.
Therefore, the legislator stressed, it is necessary to have a regulation that guarantees access to medical services. Without the citizens being victims of excessive costs.
He explained that the proposal seeks to reduce the “out-of-pocket expense” made by Mexican men and women. Through the strengthening of the established legal provisions. That is, avoid significant profit situations.
Medical and private services should advertise prices so that health is not a commodity
For her part, Senator Claudia Edith Anaya Mota, from the PRI, warned about the increase in health costs as a result of the use of private medical services, when the Institute of Health for Well-being must offer and guarantee, free of charge, the attention to citizens who come to receive these benefits.
Meanwhile, Gabriela Benavides Cobos of the PVEM, pointed out that this opinion is transcendent. Because it raises greater transparency in public and private medical services, obliged to display their costs, thereby avoiding excesses.
For his part, Senator Germán Martínez Cázares, from the Plural Group, acknowledged that with this reform, medical and private services must advertise prices so that health is not a commodity, but a right.
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