Medical liability related legislation and insurance policies around the world: A narrative literature review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Medical law defines the rules of healthcare by specifying the rights of healthcare consumers while at the same time defining the obligations of healthcare providers. When clinicians fail to provide the standard of care, medical malpractice claims arise, leading to medical liability. While many malpractice claims allege deviation from the lex artis, a substantial proportion do not ultimately establish negligence and are dismissed or settled without a finding of fault. Due to the significant impact of medical negligence on the quality of medical care, as well as on the domestic and global economy, different countries adopt different systems for managing these disputes. Finally, the mandatory or non-mandatory medical malpractice insurance makes doctors carry out their medical work without the fear of medical liability. In fact, in most countries today, doctors are given the opportunity to choose between claims-made and occurrence-based policies of medical malpractice insurance. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study is a narrative review of scientific and legal works from different countries. For the comparison of medical liability systems and insurance policies a comprehensive review of databases and legal texts was conducted. RESULTS: This study compares medical liability and malpractice insurance systems across countries, examining variations in the handling of malpractice claims and their implications. The system is adversarial in many countries, especially in the United States, to allow for a substantial compensation, while other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, focus on mediation and structured compensation processes. Notably, France, Japan and other countries follow a no-fault system, of reasoning that the system is more efficient in the sense that it reduces the patient's burden of proving negligence and thus expedites the compensation. These findings reveal how each country negotiates the balance between patient rights and healthcare provider protections, and, in turn, how these negotiations affect malpractice insurance costs and legal reforms. DISCUSSION: The analysis contrasts fault-based systems which offer large compensation awards with no-fault systems which focus on quick compensation but may lack accountability. Countries with high litigation rates like the US and Brazil have higher insurance costs, while countries like Canada and Australia have stabilized their systems through reforms. Medical liability insurance options, claims-made versus occurrence-based, raise different economic and legal concerns. Occurrence-based policies are more expensive for younger professionals, but they provide longer-term coverage than claims-made policies. CONCLUSION: Global medical liability frameworks vary considerably, reflecting cultural, economic and legal contexts. However, the comparison reveals that no system is perfect and that there is something to learn from each.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".