About Marylanders for Patient Rights
Almost every Maryland resident has had a family member or friend or themselves been hospitalized in the past year. Over 650,000 patients are admitted to Maryland hospitals each year. Over 9 million Marylanders are seen in hospitals as outpatients and 2.6 million in hospital emergency rooms annually.
For the last three years, studies by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) show that Maryland hospitals are among the worst in patient satisfaction. In October, 2018 Maryland ranked 46th out of 50 states. Maryland also ranked poorly in patient safety, falling in the bottom quartile in the USA. Maryland also ranked worst in the USA in ER wait time.
Twenty-seven states protect their citizens with a detailed Hospital Patient’s Bill of Rights. These states include New York, Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and others.
After a four year campaign by a coalition of 26 advocacy groups called Marylanders for Patient Rights, the Maryland General Assembly passed an updated Hospital Patient’s Bill of Rights unanimously in 2019, and Governor Hogan signed the bill into law.
The new law will promote transparency to patients, consistency among hospitals, and training of medical personnel in patient rights to ensure implementation. Before the new law, Maryland had a woefully outdated law from 1978 with only two sentences. Patient rights were routinely ignored by many Maryland hospitals.
The goal of the new law is to improve communication between patients and health care providers in hospitals. The Maryland Hospital Patient’s Bill of Rights will require that all hospitals in the state fully disclose 24 existing legal rights to hospital patients in a manner that the patient understands. The new law will promote the health, safety, and well-being of all hospital patients and ensure that patients are treated with dignity and respect.
The Hospital Patient’s Bill of Rights will ensure that as a hospital patient, you know you have the right to:
Treatment without discrimination
Respectful care in a clean and safe environment
Complete and current information on your diagnosis
Participate in decision-making about your own health care
A complaint or grievance process
Hospitals will be required to provide the same information on rights to each patient, and to post rights in highly visible locations within the hospital. In addition, annual training in patient rights will be required for all medical personnel in every hospital in Maryland.
