Consumer Protection Law and Medical Negligence Vis-a-Vis Award of Compensation: A Study of Various Related Issues

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi Ranjan
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Medical Negligence

scholarly journals CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT: WHAT DOCTORS NEED TO BE COGNIZANT OF?

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Purvish M Parikh
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Law School ◽  
Medical Negligence ◽  
Consumer Protection Act

<p>Doctors seem to in the news for all the wrong reasons of late. Almost every day, there is some report about compensation being awarded to complainants for medical negligence. Currently, about 10,000 cases of alleged medical negligence are being heard in various courts in India against doctors and medical establishments. In fact, a survey carried out by Sairam Bhat of National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, showed that from 2010 to 2014, there was a 400% increase of such cases being filed by unsatisfied patients. </p>

Liability for Medical Negligence Under Consumer Protection Act. 1986

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Kaibalya Panda ◽  
Pragyan Paramita Tripathy
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Medical Negligence ◽  
Consumer Protection Act

scholarly journals Handling medical negligence: necessity of a proper system

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 370-371
Author(s):  
Nuwadatta Subedi
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Medical Service ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
Legal Issue ◽  
Medical Negligence ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
The Government

The issue of medical negligence has been catching attention of many people nowadays. With advancement of technology in medical field, many incurable diseases of past time can now be managed well at the cost of burdening expenditure. This   has resulted in obvious expectations to the patient and their families that any ailment can be cured from the medical procedures and therapies. When these expectations are not met in terms of complications or death of the near ones, people get frustrated and tend to allege health care providers against medically negligent.Negligence are of two types; civil negligence where the doctors are alleged to have lost simple degree of care and attention to the patients thereby causing damage whereas in criminal negligence, the doctors grossly deviate from the standard of care and competence or perform activities which are understood prima facie as a crime, for eg: performing criminal abortion, organ transplantation against the law etc.Whatever the type of negligence, there are legal measures to file complaint against the doctors who are alleged to have caused negligence. Gone are the days when people regarded doctors near to gods. Medical service also falls under the consumer protection act where the patients are the consumers and medical personnel, the service providers. The patients have rights to get quality medical service under this act. If the patients or their relatives are dissatisfied with the medical service rendered to them by the health care providers, they have the right to lodge complaint to the compensation committee of the district in which chief district officer (CDO) is the chairman in each district. If there is an issue of criminal negligence, the complaint can also be filed in the concerned court.In some circumstances, when the patient develops complications or dies, the attendants accuse the doctors for the failure in treatment and protest in the hospital premises rather than opting the legal way of charging them against negligence. The health professionals are at times threatened and forced to apologize in public. Most of the times, they demand for compensation and many direct benefits to the relatives of the deceased. The hospitals and the health professionals feel insecure and often they have agreed to the demands put forth to peacefully settle the issue and to get prevented from defamation. The government is also unable to provide security. Similar cases have been reported time and again in Nepal, creating a sense of lawlessness in the country.When deciding whether a doctor is held liable for negligence, the “standard of care” should be analysed. It means the practice should be an accepted one and standard, such that doctor of the similar filed and competence would have also opted the same procedure in given circumstances. Even when a doctor has duly acted opting standard procedure, still there can be chances that a patient can develop complications. Every human body cannot react exactly same to a medical intervention though that may be a scientifically proven one as there can be chances of medical misadventure. The doctors should have possessed reasonable degree of care and skill when he is attending the patient. According to Bolam’s test, a person is said to have inappropriate standard, and becomes negligent, if it is proven that he had failed to do what a reasonable person would do in the circumstances.1 The degree of care and skill should be comparable to an average doctor in similar settings. In order to analyse these issues, expert opinion from reputable and unbiased experts of the similar field of medicine should be taken. In case of death due to alleged medical negligence, the dead body should be autopsied by qualified experts in Forensic Medicine. This can explain so many facts about the deceased which can be helpful to decide whether negligence has factually taken. It highlights the need of taking opinion from the experts of the concerned field by the councils framed to settle the cases of medical negligence, especially the consumer protection council, Nepal Medical Council, etc.It is a high time for the government to play role to address to this sensitive and quai-legal issue. If this trend is not ended, the trust of patients towards the doctors may nullify. The doctors also cannot work effectively when there is no safe working environment and may begin to have tendency to abandon handling critical cases with a fear of vulnerability to defamation if not physical assault in worst case. The situation is ultimately disastrous to the entire health care system. The very sensitive issue of health care delivery cannot be compared to any other commercial issues. The proper mechanism of addressing the issue of medical negligence should be practiced alongside encouragement from governmental urge to come up with better medicolegal systems in this regard. This is highly essential for balancing expectations of the patients and performance of medical professionals.

scholarly journals Medical Negligence : An Overview

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-54
Author(s):  
Bratin Kumar Dey
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Medical Professional ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Medical Negligence ◽  
Consumer Protection Act ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Manual Skills ◽  
Specialized Experts

Medical professionals are treated as next to God. They provide humanitarian services and gives solace to individuals suffering from various diseases and disorders. Due to their great service to humanity, the doctors and medical professionals are treated with reverence and since the ancient times the medical profession has been considered as a noble profession. However with the passage of time, there has been a change in the doctor - patient relationship. During the last few decades a number of incidents have come to light in which the patients have suffered due to the error and inadvertent conduct of doctors. Due to the increasing conflicts and legal disputes between the doctors and patients, most of the legal systems have developed various rules and principles to deal with such inadvertent behavior of doctors. This has led to the development of a new branch of jurisprudence, i.e. medical negligence. Hence, any negligence on part of the medical professional would be treated as either a tort of negligence or a deficiency in service under Consumer Protection Act, 1986. As the profession involves the idea of an occupation requiring purely intellectual skills or of manual skills controlled by the intellectual skill of the operator, it is distinctively different from an occupation, which is substantially production or sale or arrangement for the production or sale of commodities. Medicine is a highly complex domain. It is difficult for consumer laws to review medical negligence cases with flawless technical clarity and accuracy. Thus medical negligence is not purely a matter of consideration for judiciary but also the technical inputs of specialized experts in the field have substantial weightage while deciding the case of medical negligence against doctors. The present paper is devoted to introvert inspection of negligence in medical profession in the light of existing laws with more emphasis on the interpretation of consumer protection law by judiciary.

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