Overview
- The Maharashtra Public Health Department issued a government resolution on Friday requiring every private hospital to form Primary and Secondary Medical Boards to review requests to withdraw life-sustaining treatment under an advance directive or living will.
- A Primary Medical Board will be set up by each hospital’s medical director, CEO or medical superintendent and must include the hospital administrator as chair, the treating doctor, a critical care specialist and a senior physician or surgeon.
- The Secondary Medical Board will be constituted under the district civil surgeon for most districts, will include two outside subject experts and an external specialist from a district panel, and will involve JJ Hospital’s medical superintendent for cases in Mumbai and Mumbai Suburban.
- District civil surgeons must empanel registered medical practitioners to serve as external experts and must notify all private hospitals, a step meant to speed decisions for patients and add an independent safeguard for families seeking to act on living wills.
- The order implements the Supreme Court’s March 11, 2026 Harish Rana judgment and extends a framework first set up for government hospitals by a November 29, 2024 government resolution to the private sector.