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Medical Malpractice: The Experience in Italy

  • Symposium: Clinical Risk and Judicial Reasoning
  • Published:
Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research

Abstract

At the present time, legal actions against physicians in Italy number about 15,000 per year, and hospitals spend over €10 billion (~US$15.5 billion) to compensate patients injured from therapeutic and diagnostic errors. In a survey summary issued by the Italian Court for the Rights of the Patient, between 1996 and 2000 orthopaedic surgery was the highest-ranked specialty for the number of complaints alleging medical malpractice. Today among European countries, Italy has the highest number of physicians subject to criminal proceedings related to medical malpractice, a fact that is profoundly changing physicians’ approach to medical practice. The national health system has paid increasingly higher insurance premiums and is having difficulty finding insurance companies willing to bear the risk of monetary claims alleging medical malpractice. Healthcare costs will likely worsen as Italian physicians increasingly practice defensive medicine, thereby overutilizing resources with the goal of documenting diligence, prudence, and skill as defenses against potential litigation, rather than aimed at any patient benefit. To reduce the practice of defensive medicine and healthcare costs, a possible solution could be the introduction of an extrajudicial litigation resolution, as in other civil law countries, and a reform of the Italian judicial system on matters of medical malpractice litigation.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Prof. Francesco Maria Avato, Professor of Legal Medicine at University of Ferrara, Italy, who has introduced me to the world of legal medicine, and Atty. Stefano Faldella for his valuable technical support.

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  1. First Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Laboratorio di Tecnologia Medica, Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, Via di Barbiano 1/10, 40136, Bologna, Italy

    Francesco Traina MD

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  1. Francesco Traina MD
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Correspondence to Francesco Traina MD.

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Traina, F. Medical Malpractice: The Experience in Italy. Clin Orthop Relat Res 467, 434–442 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11999-008-0582-z

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