What will be the cost in both time and dollars for printing, explaining, completing, filing & retaining this additional form & its associated process? If for decades it has been okay to assume that a patient who voluntarily enters the hospital and seeks treatment is consenting to treatment, then what has changed now to make one believe that the patient really hasn’t consented unless he has signed a form? Is there a real practical problem that BHB is trying to solve (e.g. a history of patients coming to receive care & then later claiming they did not consent to receive general care)? Or, rather is this just the risk management department and liability averse management going a step too far creating more administrative costs and red tape for a theoretical problem which does not really exist in practice?

Here’s an idea for BHB: Why don’t you cut out the unnecessary red tape and administration and instead save those dollars to reduce the sky high cost of health care in Bermuda? Patients will ultimately be served better by a health care system they can afford to have and use when needed than by one whose cost structure is bloated by excessive administration of questionable value which inflates system costs, which in turn inflates insurance costs, which ultimately causes lower income people to go without insurance and then as a result go without timely and adequate health care.