The Karnataka Health Department is considering changes to rules that require families to pay private hospitals before receiving the bodies of deceased patients, Health Minister U.T. Khader said, after complaints that hospitals have withheld remains over unpaid bills.
Under the rules currently in force, private hospitals can require families to pay a prescribed amount before handing over a dead body. The department’s move follows concerns that families facing financial hardship are being compelled to arrange money before they can take the remains of relatives home. Complaints have also been recorded in cases where hospitals allegedly did not release bodies because the required payment had not been made.
Khader said families should not be made to suffer by having a body held back for money. “If someone dies in a private hospital, money has to be paid to get the dead body. This will be a burden for families facing financial difficulties. The work of troubling people by keeping the dead body for money should not happen,” he said, according to Prajavani.
The minister said laws had been framed on the issue in 2007 and 2018, but had not been implemented adequately. The 2018 law provided for hospitals to collect a security deposit and release the body, according to his statement.
Khader said the 2018 provisions also referred to registering cases against people who did not pay hospital charges. As a result, some families were borrowing money to settle bills, he said. The department is now considering changes to that law and plans to discuss the issue with private hospitals and nursing homes associations before preparing a new legal framework.
The proposed review places a difficult administrative question at the centre of hospital billing: how should private medical institutions recover legitimate dues without making the release of a deceased person’s remains conditional on immediate payment? The current arrangement, as described by the minister, has created a point of conflict between hospitals seeking payment and families dealing with an urgent and deeply sensitive responsibility.
For families, the issue is not limited to the amount demanded. A delay in receiving a body can affect funeral arrangements, travel plans and the ability of relatives to complete customary and administrative procedures. The department’s stated concern is that the existing process places the greatest pressure on households already facing financial distress.
The next step will be consultations with private hospitals and nursing homes associations. The health department has not announced a final replacement rule, a timeline for introducing it or details of how unpaid hospital dues would be recovered under the proposed changes. Any new framework will therefore depend on the outcome of those discussions and the legal amendments that follow.
