Law 51 regulating private medical establishments to be amended

CAIRO – 21 May 2018: The Parliament will discuss the draft law to amend Law 51 of 1981 regulating medical establishments in Egypt, including private clinics, specialized clinics, private hospitals and specialized medical centers.

Under the amendments, licensed private or investment medical facilities must provide free medical care in cases of emergency for 48 hours;afterwards a patient can stay at the hospital at his own expense or be transferred to the nearest public hospital. In addition, the hospital director must inform the patients in advance of the costs of a surgery and of any possible consequent complications.

The patient or a guardian must sign a document declaring his knowledge of the full cost. Health-care facilities are forbidden to hold the patient's body or to exploit a death for financial benefit or force the family to sign checks.

Private hospitals pay 30 percent of their revenues to the employees at the Ministry of Health’s department concerned with implementing the new law and the private hospital’s director is prohibited to take any measures related to the ownership of the hospital before obtaining a written approval from a specialized department at the Ministry of Health.

In order to operate medical establishments, an application to obtain a license must be submitted to the concerned governorate along with the registration in the concerned Medical Syndicate.

The amendments stipulate that licensed doctors shall not open more than one clinic across Egypt and shall not run more than one medical facility.

Doctors running medical institutions must be Egyptians and must receive a license to practice medicine;the law of medical profession syndicate allows non-Egyptian doctors to be equally treated and receive the license to practice medicine with a prior approval of the minister of health and the Medical Syndicate.

Before the amendments, Law 51/1981 stated that the director of a health-care facility can own more than one private clinic but cannot be the director of more than one medical facility in addition to his/her private medical clinics.

Additionally, Law 51/1981 defined five broad categories of a health-care facility: a private medical clinic (including laboratories and radiology clinics), specialized clinic, specialized medical centre, private hospital and convalescence home.