Healthcare Rights
Ayushman Bharat, emergency treatment, informed consent, mental health, disability rights, and reproductive health under Indian law.
Covered in this guide:
Under Article 21 of the Constitution and Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity (1996), no hospital — public or private — can refuse to stabilise an emergency patient because you can't pay. Ayushman Bharat (AB-PMJAY) covers up to ₹5 lakh per family per year, and ESIC covers organised-sector workers. Patient rights — informed consent, records access, confidentiality — sit in the NMC Professional Conduct Regulations, 2023. Mental health runs under the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017; disability under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. Negligence claims go to consumer commissions under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
Key Laws
Mental Healthcare Act, 2017
Act No. 10 of 2017
Right to mental healthcare and advance directives
Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016
Act No. 49 of 2016
21 disability categories, accessibility, reservations
Clinical Establishments Act, 2010
Act No. 23 of 2010
Registration and minimum standards for hospitals
National Medical Commission Act, 2019
Act No. 30 of 2019
Medical education and practice regulation
Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940
Act No. 23 of 1940
Drug safety, quality, and approval
Right to Healthcare and Emergency Treatment
The Constitution doesn't write the right to health into the Fundamental Rights chapter — but the Supreme Court has read it into Article 21 (right to life) repeatedly, and refusing emergency treatment...
Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY Health Insurance
PM-JAY is the largest publicly funded health-insurance scheme in the world by population covered. Up to ₹5 lakh per family per year, family-floater basis, for secondary and tertiary hospitalisation, c...
Informed Consent in Medical Treatment
No surgery, no invasive procedure on a competent adult patient without their free, informed and voluntary consent. The Supreme Court spelt out what "informed" actually means in Samira Kohli v. Dr. Pra...
Mental Health Rights
The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 was a near-complete rewrite of India's older mental-health law. It centred patient autonomy — advance directives, nominated representatives, the right to live in the co...
Rights of Persons with Disabilities
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 was India's response to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which the country ratified in 2007. It widened the reco...
Right to Access Your Medical Records
Your medical records belong to you, even when the hospital holds them. The NMC's 2023 ethics regulations, the Clinical Establishments Act, the RTI Act for public hospitals, and now the Digital Persona...
Reproductive and Maternal Health Rights
India's central reproductive-health framework sits across three statutes that pull in different directions but together cover most of what arises in clinical practice — termination of pregnancy under...
Right to Palliative Care and End-of-Life Decisions
The Supreme Court's Common Cause v. Union of India (2018) decision did something India's law had been quietly avoiding for decades — it recognised the right of a terminally ill patient to refuse life-...