Patients Bill Of Rights Essay

Within the Patient’s Bill of Rights, there are eight major rights. There are five of which I find most important for patients to receive the highest quality of care. These five include the following: access to emergency services, taking part in treatment decisions, respect and non-discrimination, confidentiality of health information, and choice of providers and plans. The most important area of the Patient Bills of Rights, in my opinion, is the access to emergency services. I work in an assisted living facility and often times, families will deny the service of sending their loved one to the hospital when an accident or fall occurs due to the financial burden. The down side of that decision is the family won’t have the reassurance that their loved one doesn’t have anything more severe going on due to the accident. I find it very important that access to emergency services be available at all times in order to provide high quality care without the financial burden. Secondly, all patients deserve to make executive decisions about their own treatments. I find this important because let’s say a patient is diagnosed with cancer late in life. Their options to treatment are given as chemotherapy, radiation therapy or surgery. It is unfair for a doctor to make the decision

No one wants to go back to a doctor who treats them differently due to ethnicity, gender or race. Also, health care professionals who discriminate will lose patients left and right. Along the same lines, the patient is paying for the services and seeking help, they will stop seeking help if they keep running into doctors that discriminate against them. Therefore, the patients’ health could be in harm and they won’t know it. Thus, a mutual respectful relationship between doctor and patient is crucial to prevent a patient from being afraid to seek medical