Patient incidents against medical staff 40 percent do not know they are protected by law

The patient's rights, based on Kosovo's ruling laws, constitute human rights in healthcare and include legal and ethical issues in relations between health professionals and patients.

Health care with the patient at the centre means active participation of citizens in drafting their policies and individual treatment.

Although in Kosovo the patient is protected by law, based on a research done this year by the Association of Patients' Rights, it turns out that many citizens have no knowledge of their rights.

Recent research shows that about 40 percent of them do not know that they are protected by law.

Suzana Canolli, a citizen from Pristina, says her mother after lying at the University Clinical Centre in Kosovo for operation, family members had taken her home without surgery, arguing that the long list of patients did not allow her to operate, as in case it had not been urgent.

My mother's “has been a week's spread out at the Surgery Clinic, about a month ago. They opened the story about him. But then we have been told to take her home because it was not an emergency. We have filed complaints after she carried out all pre-opperative procedures. We've filed complaints, but we still don't have an answer to”, says Canolly.

Association for Patients' Rights leader Besim Kodra says the Health Ministry has never launched a conscious campaign to inform patients of their rights, as well as to increase transparency within public health institutions.

He said each citizen has the right to adequate health services with the aim of preventing disease, as well as the right to equal access to health services without any kind of discrimination.

The situation on the field is not well, since there are no drugs, sanitation and they make it an unrecognizable treatment for the citizen. In a research we've done this year, it turns out that about 40 percent of citizens don't know they have rights in receiving health care, and that makes it difficult for us to work, because they don't know how to seek rights”, he says.

Kodra also stresses that currently “does not have a good term system, and patients lose confidence that they will be treated in time as the lists are long, especially in cases of surgical intervention”, Kodra said.

In the Ministry of Health, they say that during 2019, 163 complaints were received through a free line for complaints by citizens in health services.

Jupferie Zabeli, official for information at the Ministry of Health, said the largest number of complaints referred to poor medical staff behaviour with patients, then lack of doctors at the workplace, as well as reference from the public sector to the private one.

We as an institution have not yet made a review of complaints, as these data are due for January-November of this year. The final report with accurate information on what happened to patients is expected to be published, but it is also expected that the doctors, whose complaints have been prosecuted in the health inspectors. In January 2020 we will date a final report”, Zabel said.

Meanwhile, Shpend Fazliu, spokesman at the University Clinical Centre in Kosovo, said that apart from the Ministry of Health, even within KKUK, it is the commission that examines citizens' complaints, respectively, patients.

In clinics inside QKUK, there are boxes of complaints, which on a daily basis receive the commission and depending on the weight of the complaint, or are immediately resolved or prosecuted.

“The Ankes primarily have to do with waiting lists or waiting within the QKUK clinics. Many of the complaints are resolved there, but there are also complaints that are regularly prosecuted. At times, there are also misunderstandings on the part of patients, but the side still receives answers to the complaint or concern it has”, Fazliu said.

Public health institutions are obliged by the Health Law to place patients' rights cards in hospital spaces.