A Patient's Bill of Rights
Item
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Title
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A Patient's Bill of Rights
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ABP identifier
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ABP-W-0011
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Date
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1973
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Type
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Professional statement
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Description
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The American Hospital Association approved its Statement of a Patient's Bill of Rights on February 6, 1973. The statement articulated expectations concerning patient information, participation in care, privacy, confidentiality, and other dimensions of the patient-hospital relationship.
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Intellectual stream
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Clinical ethics & professionalism
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Law & public policy
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Verification status
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Verified
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Evidence confidence
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High
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Historical significance
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The Patient's Bill of Rights provides a concrete institutional marker of the broader shift from predominantly physician-centered authority toward explicit recognition of patients as participants with rights and expectations within health care. It helps situate autonomy and informed decision-making beyond the history of research regulation.
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Open question
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How did the 1973 statement interact with contemporaneous consumer-rights, patient-rights, civil-rights, and women's-health movements, and how widely did hospitals operationalize its provisions?