Medical Malpractice and Compensation in Global Perspective

Medical Malpractice and Compensation in Global Perspective
Author: Ken Oliphant
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2013-10-29
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3110270234

The papers in this collection are drawn from a symposium held in Vienna in December 2010. Organised by the Institute for European Tort Law and the Chicago-Kent Law Review, in collaboration with the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law, the conference drew together legal experts from 14 national or regional systems across six continents. Medical malpractice and compensation for medical injuries are issues which regularly create tension and innovation in national legal systems but the analysis of these areas is often limited to national audiences. This study examines the issues in a uniquely global context, demonstrating the breadth of approaches currently taken around the world and revealing key areas of tension and the likely direction of future developments. Wherever possible, the analysis is supported by reference to empirical data. The 14 legal systems covered in the collection are Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Scandinavia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. A general comparative introduction completes the collection.

Compensation Schemes for Damages Caused by Healthcare and Alternatives to Court Proceedings

Compensation Schemes for Damages Caused by Healthcare and Alternatives to Court Proceedings
Author: Dobrochna Bach-Golecka
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2021-05-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3030670007

The book discusses compensation mechanisms and other non-judicial means that offer alternatives to court proceedings, designed and provided for within national legal regimes. Such schemes are primarily of a civil or administrative character and are mainly intended to supplement criminal liability for medical negligence. As such, the book focuses on medical malpractice and prospective medical harm from a civil law perspective. It examines the contemporary perspective of a patient-physician relationship, which has evolved from a relation of a quasi-patrimonial character into a partnership of quasi-equal parties, dealing with a medical treatment procedure as a scientific endeavor. It also reviews the extra-legal conditions that are taken into account in compensation arrangements, particularly the need to satisfy a psychological urge for conciliation and empathy on the part of medical personnel. Lastly, the book explores the responsibility of public authorities and healthcare providers to guarantee access to healthcare that is of a sufficient quality, based upon standards provided for in international (and European) law.

Medical Malpractice Legislation

Medical Malpractice Legislation
Author: Carlo Maria Masieri
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 85
Release: 2024-05-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1040096980

This book aims to analyse the legal tools that the legislatures of France, Germany and Italy adopted in order to regulate medical malpractice. In the mid-1970s, a reform movement started in the United States, where there was considerable concern about then ongoing medical malpractice crises. Since the beginning of the current century, France, Germany and Italy have passed statutes that aim to reform medical liability rules. Thus, it is first interesting to assess whether any medical malpractice crises have been identified in these systems and, second, how these have been faced through the passing of new statutes on the continent. Accordingly, the first chapter explores the idea of medical malpractice crisis and its relationship with the insurance market, also considering the reflections of American scholars. It then reconstructs the French, German and Italian legal frameworks, as well as their insurance and litigation contexts, reviewing and commenting on the quantitative evidence that was collected before the reforms. The second chapter briefly summarises the debate on medical malpractice reforms in France, Germany and Italy. It then analyses the statutes that have been passed, distinguishing between reforms that consolidate case law and reforms that introduce innovative solutions, sometimes repealing court-developed doctrines. In particular, the chapter examines in a comparative perspective the diff erent options adopted in these civil law countries with regard to the rules on liability, burden of proof, statute of limitations and damages. Moreover, the chapter examines the reforms of insurance, procedural and evidence law, to the extent they affect medical malpractice cases. The third chapter reviews and analyses the current available data related to medical malpractice litigation and insurance after the reforms adopted in France, Germany and Italy, in order to find out evidence of their effectiveness and efficiency. It also highlights some aspects of medical malpractice law that still belong to the domain of the judiciary. It finally points out which problems may be addressed by the legislatures and what further data should be collected in the future. This work may interest legal scholars, healthcare providers, insurers and policymakers.

A Measure of Malpractice

A Measure of Malpractice
Author: Paul C. Weiler
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1993
Genre: Insurance, Physicians' liability
ISBN: 9780674558809

A Measure of Malpractice tells the story and presents the results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study, the largest and most comprehensive investigation ever undertaken of the performance of the medical malpractice system. The Harvard study was commissioned by the government of New York in 1986, in the midst of a malpractice crisis that had driven insurance premiums for surgeons and obstetricians in New York City to nearly $200,000 a year. The Harvard-based team of doctors, lawyers, economists, and statisticians set out to investigate what was actually happening to patients in hospitals and to doctors in courtrooms, launching a far more informed debate about the future of medical liability in the 1990s. Careful analysis of the medical records of 30,000 patients hospitalized in 1984 showed that approximately one in twenty-five patients suffered a disabling medical injury, one quarter of these as a result of the negligence of a doctor or other provider. After assembling all the malpractice claims filed in New York State since 1975, the authors found that just one in eight patients who had been victims of negligence actually filed a malpractice claim, and more than two-thirds of these claims were filed by the wrong patients. The study team then interviewed injured patients in the sample to discover the actual financial loss they had experienced: the key finding was that for roughly the same dollar amount now being spent on a tort system that compensates only a handful of victims, it would be possible to fund comprehensive disability insurance for all patients significantly disabled by a medical accident. The authors, who came to the project from very different perspectives about the present malpractice system, are now in agreement about the value of a new model of medical liability. Rather than merely tinker with the current system which fixes primary legal responsibility on individual doctors who can be proved medically negligent, legislatures should encourage health care organizations to take responsibility for the financial losses of all patients injured in their care.

Health Care Ethics and the Law

Health Care Ethics and the Law
Author: Donna K. Hammaker
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2016-02-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 128411807X

This text engages students with the ethical decisions faced by health care professionals every day. Based on principles and applications in health care ethics and the law, this text extends beyond areas that are often included in discussions of political philosophy and the principles of justice.

Practitioner's Guide to Medical Malpractice in South African Law

Practitioner's Guide to Medical Malpractice in South African Law
Author: Ian Dutton
Publisher: Siber Ink
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2015-06-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1920025952

The purpose of this book is to set out the fundamental principles governing the law of medical malpractice in clear and understandable terms, so that those principles can be applied in daily practice. The intersection of the fields of medicine and the law produces formidable challenges. For the lawyer, the applicable legal principles and issues are as intellectually and professionally demanding as encountered in any field of the law. For the medical practitioner, there is at present an obstructive uncertainty and anxiety about the legal rules which apply, and the health professions accordingly feel under siege. Added to this is the formative role that government and civil society plays in considering and assimilating into our legal system profound policy considerations affecting our most intimate interests. This book addresses these issue clearly and comprehensively.

Tort Liability and Autonomous Systems Accidents

Tort Liability and Autonomous Systems Accidents
Author: Phillip Morgan
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2023-10-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1802203842

Autonomous systems driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have significant potential for increased productivity and improved safety in many sectors, but it is inevitable that some accidents will occur. The law needs an adequate way to respond to these scenarios and compensate those wrongfully injured. This comprehensive book examines the unique difficulties that autonomous systems create for existing accident compensation systems founded on tort, and proposes solutions.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law
Author: David Orentlicher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1135
Release: 2021-08-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190846771

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law addresses some of the most critical issues facing scholars, legislators, and judges today: how to protect against threats to public health that can quickly cross national borders, how to ensure access to affordable health care, and how to regulate the pharmaceutical industry, among many others. When matters of life and death literally hang in the balance, it is especially important for policymakers to get things right, and the making of policy can be greatly enhanced by learning from the successes and failures of approaches taken in other countries. Where there are "common challenges" in law and health, there is much to be gained from experiences elsewhere. Thus, for example, countries that suffered early from the COVID-19 pandemic provided valuable lessons about public health interventions for countries that were hit later. Accordingly, the Handbook considers key health law questions from a comparative perspective. In health law, common challenges are frequent. In addition to ones already mentioned, there are questions about addressing the social determinants of health (e.g., poverty and pollution), organizing health systems to optimize use of available resources, ensuring that physicians provide care of the highest quality, protecting patient privacy in a data-driven world, and properly balancing patient autonomy with the interest in preserving life when reproductive and end-of-life decisions are made. This Handbook's wide scope and comparative take on health law are particularly timely. Economic globalization has made it increasingly important for different countries to harmonize their legal rules. Students, practitioners, scholars, and policymakers need to understand how health laws vary across national boundaries and how reforms can ensure a convergence toward an optimal set of legal rules, or ensure that specific legal arrangements are needed in particular contexts. Indeed, comparative analysis has become essential for legal scholars, and The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law is the only resource that provides such an analysis in health law.

Research Handbook on Patient Safety and the Law

Research Handbook on Patient Safety and the Law
Author: John Tingle
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2023-12-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1802207066

Despite recurring efforts, a gap exists across a variety of contexts between the protection of patients’ safety in theory and in practice. This timely Research Handbook highlights these critical issues and suggests both legal and policy changes are necessary to better protect patients’ safety.