Legal Protection of Patients against Delayed Emergency Care Caused by Administrative Requirements in Hospitals

Abstract

Emergency care demands immediate help, yet hospitals also handle registration, verification of financing and payment. This study analyses how the hospital’s duty to provide emergency care is regulated and what legal protection patients have when care is delayed by administrative requirements. It uses normative legal research that is descriptive and analytical, with statutory, conceptual and limited case approaches, based on library and document study. Article 174 of Law No. 17 of 2023 on Health and Article 836 of Government Regulation No. 28 of 2024 do not forbid administration, but forbid refusing a patient, asking for an advance payment and putting administrative matters first so that care is delayed. The third prohibition did not exist in the earlier law. Preventive protection comes from the financing guarantee in Presidential Regulation No. 82 of 2018 and from ministerial circulars, while repressive protection is spread over administrative sanctions, civil claims and criminal law. The gaps are that no criteria for choosing an administrative sanction were found, that Article 438 is worded as failing to give first aid so that a delay ending in help is not clearly covered, and that by the authors’ calculation the fine in paragraph (1) falls by 75.00% if the fine categories of Law No. 1 of 2026 are applied. The study concludes that patients are protected at the level of the norm, but certainty of sanction and remedy is incomplete.