Earticle

Due to the awareness of their rights for medical liability and the advancement of legal principles, it becomes also not hard to find those who seek damages against hospitals, doctors and nurses for the suicide committed under the protection of psychiatric institute in Korea these days. Judgements on these kinds of cases are not enough yet, so that it may be too early to try to find principles used in these cases, however it is hardly wrong to read following things from above cases. That is, to gain the case, plaintiffs should show (1) there exists an obligation of “due care”(there is a special relation between patients and hospitals), (2) the duty is violated on the basis of the applicable standard of care, (3) whatever injures or damages are sustained are proximately caused by the breach of duty and (4) the plaintiff suffers compensable damages. To specific, whether a psychiatric institute was liable for wrong death or not depends upon the patients conditions, circumstances and the extent of the danger the patients poses to himself or herself; in short, the foreseeability of self-inflicted harm(the doctor should have or could reasonably have foreseen the patient's suicide and the doctor's negligence actually caused the suicide). In this context if a patient exhibit strong suicidal tendencies, constant observation should be required. Negligence has been found not exist, however, when a patient abruptly and unexpectedly dashes from an attendant and jumps out a window or otherwise attempts to injure himself or herself. And the standard of conduct that is required to meet the obligation of “due care” is based on what the “reasonable practitioner” would do in like circumstances. The standard is not one of excellence or superior practice; it only requires that the physician exercise that degree of skill and care that would be expected of the average qualified practitioner practicing under like circumstances. Most of these principles have been established at cases of the U.S.A and Japan. In this article you can also find the legal organizations of medical liability and medical contacts on the suicide of patients who have psychiatric diseases under Korean negligence law.

Having gone through socioeconomic changes from an agricultural to a post-industrial society, mental health system accordingly has been changed. In Korea where the socioeconomic change has been so rapid, the mental health system and law have been behind the socioeconomic system. Post-industrial society needs more humanized and advanced mental health system, however, Korean mental health law reflects ideology of Korean society in industrial age. This paper attempts to assess the significance Korea's Mental Health Law against the backdrop of socioeconomic changes. A substantial part of the report is devoted to identifying discrepancies between Korea's Mental Health Law and the perspectives of post-industrial ideology and areas for improvement. Improvement in mental health law should take place in line with the changes occurring in socioeconomic environments, the social concept of family, and the public awareness of human rights. Korea's mental health law should be changed in a way to improve hospitalization procedure for people with mental illness, promote the opening of mental health facilities and improve the quality of the lives of the mentally ill. Further changes are deemed necessary in the public and media view of mental illness. Also, the national budget will have to be increased with a view to raise the social rights of those with mental illness to receive quality rehabilitation services.

In recent years, as well as the other countries, medical dispute cases increase continuously in China. one of the reason that medical cases increase rapidly like this is after reformation and opening people's sense of independence, law and right come to be high, but a theoretical study about medical malpractice liability is insufficient and there is deficiency at legislation from 1986 civil law general rule is carried out in Chinese. but it is difficulty to deal with those more and more complicated medical dispute only according to the law above. so in 2001 The Chinese Supreme Court established the judicial construction about civil litigation evidence which regulated the shift of the burden of proof of medical malpractice and the relation of cause and effect from the plaintiffs to the defendants. in 2002 the State Council made out Incident of Malpractice Processing Rule. but many scholar pointed out the problem in it. on the other side, according to Chinese Contract Law parties could choose contractual or tort liability to prosecute. but because of the judicial construction above majority of people asked tort liability. of course there are some cases asking contractual liability. then this paper aim at analysis of the Chinese medical malpractice liability, especially of the problems about the subject of responsibility, burden of proof and scope of responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the present situation and legal problems of u-health. U-health plays an important role in enlarging the healthcare service and making the healthcare service efficient. The use of Korean excellent IT technology can lead us to a world wide competitive healthcare industry. Although u-health has the weakness in privacy protection, the usefulness and convenience of u-health is great. Therefore we must analyse the legal issues of security technology, RFID, telemedicine and EMR pertaining to u-health and construct the appropriate legislative structure to resolve the legal problems of u-health.

To succeed the claim of medical negligence, the plaintiff should establish the medical profession’s fault, and the causation between the fault and damages. The faults are judged on lege artis, which is based on expert witness. However, judges often infer the faults and causations from circumstantial evidences and patients’ injuries. This presumptions depend on the law of nature(Erfahrungsgesetz). The law of nature can explain the typical development of the event. If the circumstantial evidences were in accordance with that, the faults and causations would be able to be recognized by the judges. Therefore the standards of comparison such as lege artis or the law of nature play an important role for medical negligence liabilities to be imputed to doctors or hospitals. The factual elements necessary to assume the fault is similar to those of the causation, for the concept of the fault is correlated with that of the causation. The elements include the temporal and spatial proximity between damages and defendant’s medical treatments, no existence of other causations, the probability of bed results developed by the medical treatments, and so on. These enable the fault and causation to be assumed at the same times.

In July 1989, Korea had achieved the national medical insurance system comprehensively covering the whole population since its inception of 12 years before, and subsequently the plural medical insurers had integrated to the unique health insurer system in July 2000. But there yet remain some problems to be improved under low contributions rates and poor benefit packages, especially the shortage of assuring beneficiaries' rights. The Health Insurance Appeal System is composed of a two-tiered system of committee. The Formal Objection Committees built in the National Health Insurance Corporation and in the Health Insurance Review Agency respectively examine the formal objections to the decisions of the Corporation, or the Review Agency. And the Dispute Mediation Committee built under the command of the Minister of Health and Welfare reviews the protests against the decisions on the formal objections by each Formal Objection Committee. To cope with the appellant in relation to the administration on the qualification of the insureds, contributions, and insurance benefits etc, is found to be unsatisfactory. There’s the reason of poor function on right-relief caused by the loose composition of the Appeal Committee, the deficit of people’s recognition and P.R., the lack of professional manpower and the Committee’s independency, and time lag in making decisions and so on. Consequently the Appeal System should be improved to secure the rights-relief function, to empower the professionalism of the Appeal Committee, to strengthen P.R. for the beneficiaries, to build up the staff's proficiency through training, and to develop the quality of administrative services.

In the situation of bringing out of social problem about the medical accident and medical dispute, from 1988 the enactment activity for a legislative bill on conciliation of dispute has promoted, a legislative bill on prevention and relief of medical accident was again proposed in December, 2005. This bill has been faced rough going in review process of National Assembly. Because the purpose of this legislative bill is the conciliation of interest of between medical service consumer and medical service supplier, an item of issues of law is no-fault compensation scheme. However, as no-fault compensation scheme runs counter to the principle liability with fault in our civil law, as expected, whether the inducement is valid or, if induced, the problem is not must be totally reviewed. First of all, the general of principle liability without fault and especially the medical system in foreign countries are reviewed, by reviewing an issue and the pros and cons of the inducement of no-fault compensation scheme, this article draws the conclusion. After all, considering that the necessity adapting Gefahrdungschftung in medical accident as much as other industrial fields exists, the many provisions of the principle liability without fault exists in civil law and special law of our law system, and no-fault compensation scheme let legislative purpose be, to what extent, achieved by conciliating patient and doctor, the inducement of principle liability without fault in medical field is reasonable in the aspect of politic and legal system.

As issues of education, employment and so on, the medical issue is one of the hot spots of society in China today. The health system reform which was pushed ahead after China’s Revolution and open to the outside world hasn’t received great progress. Many actual problems haven’t been solved, for example it is difficult and expensive to see a doctor. With the development of the economy and society, the citizen’s legal consciousness has gradually risen. They make a claim for better medical service. At the same time, the number of the disputes of medical care arises annually. China has sped up the opening of service trade for fulfilling promises of entry the WTO since 2001. China has already opened many service trade fields, including medical field. From the domestic perspective, there are many problems in domestic medical department. From the international perspective, China’s present medical level falls behind the world advanced medical level. Under this background, it is a bold act for China to open the medical service field to foreign investors. Today, a huge medical service market is developed in China. However, the government’s investment to medical devices and the financing channels is limited. Therefore, it is inevitable that individuals, social organizations and foreign investors invest to the medical market. In view of the situation, Chinese government issued a series of relevant laws and rules. In recent years, many multinational companies, consortiums, charitable institutions, enterprises and individuals establish various medical institutions in China. But there are rare research in the actuality and legal subject of foreign investment to Chinese medical market. Hence, it is necessary to realize the actuality of foreign investment to Chinese medical market, to familiar with the elements and procedure of establishing foreign joint and cooperative medical institution. Meanwhile, analyzing the existing problems and posing the legal subject have important theoretic and practical value.

Medical supplies have contradiction of efficacy and side effect to the various diseases together. Therefore, people have tried to reduce the side effects and also provide various methods to cope with any damages from the medicine quickly. In the case of accidents by medical supplies, the victim can be protected with advantage by the Product Liability Law rather than the Torts. The limit of Product Liability Law’s application depends on whether medical supplies belong to the product or not. According to Product Liability Law, the product should be processed. Therefore, medical supplied should be processed to be the category of product. It can be said that the medical supplies in pharmacy, Chinese medicine, medical herbs, biological medicine manufactures, blood manufactured medicine, cord blood, hemopoietic progenitior cell and stem cell belongs to the manufactured products. The mixture by the prescription of doctor or preparation of pharmacist can be recognized as the product because prescription or preparation is a manufacturing act. Therefore, applying Product Liability Law to manufacturer, doctor or pharmacist would achieve the goal which is protecting the victims extensively.