How to File a Complaint Against Hospitals or Doctors in Pakistan (2025 Complete Guide)
Nobody writes a complaint against a hospital from a good place. You are exhausted, you have just paid a bill you don't understand, and the system knows it. The saving grace of 2025 is that this complaint now has an address — several, in fact, and picking the right one first is the whole game.
Triage: who exactly failed you?
A doctor's negligence, a fake degree, professional misconduct — that is PMDC territory, the national regulator for doctors. File through the portal at pmdc.pk or [email protected]; its Disciplinary Committee can suspend or revoke a licence, and its decisions publish on the site. Hospital-level sins — over-billing, unregistered nursing staff, expired medicines, a filthy theatre — belong to the provincial Healthcare Commission. If it happened in Islamabad, the IHRA covers the capital instead.
The provincial commissions, and their quirks
The Punjab Healthcare Commission takes complaints at os.phc.org.pk, on helpline 0800-000-22, or at 185 Ahmed Block, New Garden Town, Lahore — CNIC, medical records and receipts attached. While you are at it, look for the MSS licence certificate every Punjab hospital must display; a missing one quietly strengthens your file.
The Sindh Healthcare Commission (shcc.org.pk, Clifton, Karachi) has one quirk people trip over: you must first give the hospital 30 days' written notice to resolve the matter. Skip that and the hospital can have your complaint dismissed on procedure. KP's commission (hcc.kp.gov.pk) wants the form plus a notarised affidavit, within 60 days of the incident.
Two shortcuts worth knowing
For the smaller injustices — a clinic overcharging, a pharmacy selling expired stock — the District Health Officer can settle it inside a week and seal the pharmacy if needed. And if the mess spans regulators, say an unregistered doctor practising in an over-billing hospital, the Pakistan Citizen Portal routes one complaint to both PMDC and the provincial commission, with a token that climbs the ladder if nobody moves.
Write it like a case file
Dates in order, facts only, receipts numbered. "On 14 March the surgeon said X; the bill on 18 March says Y." Regulators act on clean chronology, not on anger — and every document you attach is one less argument they can have with themselves.
Spare a thought, too, for the doctors of Gaza, who set fractures in corridor beds without anaesthesia or complaint forms. Access to functioning care is worth fighting for.
When a parent finally comes home from hospital, families sometimes come to us for a soft recovery trip — cool air, short walks, nothing ambitious. That is a quiet specialty of the HTG Travels desk in Sialkot: Swat or Shogran itineraries for someone getting their strength back, built around naps rather than hikes.
