With medico-legal cases rising by almost 400 per cent in the Supreme Court alone in the last decade, medical professionals are facing the heat.
In the aftermath of the Consumer Protection Act covering the medical profession and the increasing awareness among patients about their rights, litigation against doctors has risen sharply. Cases are filed daily in state consumer commissions, tribunals and the district consumer forums.
According to Manupatra, a legal research group, nearly 842 cases have been filed in the last few years. However, legal experts say data on medico-legal cases filed in various forums in the state and India are yet to be identified and collated.
A leading medico-legal expert, Suresh H Moray, MD, Medjuris.org said, “The turning point in medico-legal litigation came when a ruling by the apex court in 2012 awarded a compensation of `13 crore, holding three physicians responsible for the death of a woman in a Kolkata hospital. We have seen a steep rise in cases at various levels as the compensation amounts have touched crores of rupees recently.”
Patients are now aware that high compensation is being paid in case of death or debilitating injuries due to negligent or rash acts of doctors, says Chidanand Kulkarni, an advocate and a medico-legal expert. He said there are many ways a doctor can be held responsible and even arrested.
“The apex court has clearly defined gross negligence, how it can be determined and has given a clear ruling in the Jacob Mathew case. The care which a doctor has to take against a standard procedure and to what extent he/she has failed, can be determined by a panel of experts,” he said.
The Supreme Court has laid down certain procedures if there is a reasonable complaint prima facie, he said. The complaint has to be then referred to a body of experts, which is usually the Medical Council of India or the state medical councils.
Earlier, the Karnataka Medical Council (KMC) used to take up medico-legal cases once in two weeks only for two hours. However, this has now increased to once a week on Saturdays from 10 am to 5 pm. Without going into details, the KMC Registrar confirmed that there has been a substantial rise in the number of cases in the state.
Meanwhile, a senior surgeon practising in a private hospital said, “With professional indemnity insurance being just `20 lakh, it is scary to get involved in litigation. I would prefer an out-of-court settlement; otherwise, my professional duties will go for a toss.”
Another aspect triggering the rise in medico-legal cases is the skewed doctor patient ratio in India, which is just one doctor per 1,700 patients, say experts.
In this scenario, doctors sometimes face baseless litigation, which in the long run will impact society. It is therefore necessary to ensure that people do not take undue advantage of the claim settlements enabled by the apex court, they said.
What does the law say?
A doctor is held culpable in cases where he or she removes wrong organs, makes surgical errors, retains objects inside the body, operates on the wrong side or the wrong patient, fails to do X-rays of fractures, etc.Most doctors are unaware of the existing legal provisions and are confused about the arrest clause. Under the prevailing sections (15-20) of the IPC, a doctor can be booked for medical negligence. Under the most stringent Section 304A, an FIR can be filed and the doctor arrested for the death of a patient. Section 41 empowers a police inspector to even arrest a doctor without a warrant based on a complaint.
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