Patients must receive quality care that is professionally delivered in a manner that respects their rights.
Patients have a right to:
•Receive information about services and physicians.
•Be treated with respect in recognition of their dignity and right to privacy. Never respond to patients with indifference. Always show warmth, caring, professionalism, efficiency, and competence.
•Participate with physicians in decision-making regarding their health care.
•Have a candid discussion of appropriate or medically necessary treatment options for their conditions, regardless of cost or benefit coverage.
•Voice complaints or appeals about their care.
•Positive comments made by the patients about the improvement of their health about the physician, other staff, or any aspect of the service that they are receiving should be relayed to the physician.
•Negative comments should also be relayed to the physician, as the comment may be a signal about a misunderstanding or a problem that should be addressed. Route any comments directly to the physician via a note on the patient’s folder. For more information, see Complaints.
•Be represented by parents, guardians, family patients, or other conservators when the patients are unable to fully participate in their treatment decisions.
•Discuss potential treatment options without regard to plan coverage, side effects of treatment, and management of symptoms. Physicians must educate patients regarding their health needs and share findings of history and physical examinations.
•Make the final determination of the course of action among clinically acceptable choices.
Patients have the responsibility to:
•Provide information that its physicians need in order to care for them.
•Follow the plans and instructions for care that they have agreed to with their physicians.
Physicians and staff have the responsibility to:
•Provide services in a culturally competent/non-discriminatory manner to all patients, including those with limited English proficiency or reading skills and those with diverse cultural or ethnic backgrounds.
•Provide information that is readable, easily understood (at 8th grade level), consumer tested, and in the languages of the major population groups served. If 10% of the population speaks a language other than English, patient materials should be provided in that language.
•Make public declarations through such things as posters, patient handbooks, newsletters, and mission statements that provision of health services is not influenced by patient’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, or source of payment.
•Provide patients with information needed to understand benefit coverage and obtain primary and specialty care.
•Provide its patients, upon request, with information about prior authorization rules.
•Provide written information to the patient about how to voice a complaint.