Hospital facilities and healthcare professionals face a challenge unique and incomparable to any other in our modern history. Executive Order No. OE-2020-036 issued by the governor on April 21, 2020 must be converted into law, in a healthy exercise of justice by the Legislative Assembly, to correct any controversy regarding its validity and thus avoid adding it. more restlessness to our already dejected medical and hospital class.
From March 2020 to the present, clinical management guides, employee protection guides and others have undergone countless changes in the midst of this crisis and in a very short space of time. Similarly, medical disciplines and calls to outline care guides have not fully agreed on the proper way and way to handle this terrible virus. The threat that the spread of COVID 19 is a continuous risk until there is an approved vaccine, provokes new and even conflicting scenarios.
In the same way and different from other industries, the response to the emergency by the government requires that private hospitals continue to provide services as the arm of the State for the implementation of government emergency plans.
The country has witnessed how different opinions and recommendations have been discussed on and off the island on methods and procedures to deal with the whole range of situations that this pandemic has caused us. These situations are not limited to positive patients only. There are also a number of patients with chronic conditions who remain at home because they are afraid of going to a hospital or medical office, due to the risk of contagion and do not seek medical attention for their health conditions, and the effect of which is that appropriate care under those circumstances be challenging.
Would it be fair that doctors, health facilities, nurses, technicians, and others, who have no control over these orders, over the amount of testing, over the equipment, and over the pandemic, also have to deal with the threat of lawsuits?
It deserves support for health service providers, who, after the 1993 Health Reform, were in charge of the function of providing the country’s health services. This sector, with all the essential components that surround it (doctors, nurses and other health professionals) work tirelessly to be the government arm that manages the emergency plan designed by the government of Puerto Rico.
It is these health professionals and the facilities where they work who are on the front lines of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing these services and putting at risk the most precious thing one has, which is life.
Hospitals, doctors, nurses and other health professionals have fulfilled their duty to treat the sick, to be available and open, to be the arm of the state in coordinating the pandemic and to provide comfort to the afflicted population.
Legislative Assembly, it is your time to address this matter fairly and for the benefit of those who risk their lives for us, without undermining the constitutional right of patients to claim grievances, in circumstances not related to this COVID-19 emergency, and be compensated fairly in cases where there are intentional or criminal acts. Both interests are harmonizable.
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