health law

Introduction

 the branch of law dealing with various aspects of health care, including the practices of caregivers and the rights of patients.

Maintenance of professional standards

History

 Physicians historically have set their own standards of care, and their conduct has usually been judged by comparing it with that of other physicians. Ethical canons, or codes, generally focused on professional etiquette and courtesy toward fellow physicians rather than on relationships with patients. The Hippocratic oath, formulated in the 5th century BCE, presumably by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, was a notable exception, but its provisions were ascribed to by only a minority of Greek physicians.

      The law became intimately involved in medical practice in the 20th century. Historically, legal medicine, or forensic medicine, was a field devoted exclusively to the uses of medicine in the courtroom, primarily in two settings: forensic pathology and forensic psychiatry. The pathologist has traditionally been asked to determine and testify to the cause of death in cases of suspected homicide and to aspects of various injuries involving crimes such as assault and rape. Medical testimony may also be required in civil cases involving, for example, occupational injury, negligent injury, automobile accidents, and paternity suits. Similarly, when a defendant pleads insanity as a defense, a psychiatrist is asked to examine the defendant and to testify as to his or her mental state at the time of the crime. The relevant question is usually whether the defendant's criminal behaviour was the product of a mental illness or whether he or she was able to distinguish right from wrong. In civil cases, psychiatrists frequently appear as witnesses in cases of child custody and involuntary commitment for mental illness.

      Since the 1960s the legal climate has changed drastically. Civil lawsuits alleging medical malpractice have become a fact of professional life for many physicians. Issues formerly relegated to ethics, such as abortion and termination of medical treatment, also have become important civil rights issues in courtrooms across the world, as have issues of informed consent and patients' rights. Wide-ranging campaigns aimed at arresting the spread of infectious diseases, such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome ( AIDS) and influenza, have involved the legal system in issues of privacy, confidentiality, mandatory vaccination, and research using human subjects. Since the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, physicians have also been intimately involved in preparing for possible bioterrorist attacks that could involve contagious agents such as smallpox. These preparations have included an abortive attempt to get all emergency health care providers vaccinated against smallpox, as well as more successful attempts to engage state and local public health agencies in emergency preparedness planning. These latter preparations have included assessments of the sufficiency of public health law, which is predominantly state law.

      So great has the change been that forensic medicine has now become a subspecialty of a separate field, usually called health law to emphasize its application not only to medicine but to health care in general. This new field of health law is not limited to the courtroom but is active as well in legislatures, regulatory agencies, hospitals, and physicians' offices.

Relationship of law and ethics

      In the 1960s, American legal philosopher Lon Fuller distinguished between “the morality of aspiration” and “the morality of duty.” The former may be denoted ethics, the latter law. Ethics tells people what they should do and embodies the ideals they should strive to attain. Unethical behaviour leads to punishments that are related to how an individual is perceived, both by himself or herself and others. Law, on the other hand, provides boundaries of actions, set by society, beyond which a person may go only by risking external sanctions, such as incarceration or loss of a medical license.

      This may explain why ethical codes usually involve generalities, while laws tend to be more specific. For example, the Hippocratic oath is concerned with the physician's doing no harm, refraining from performing abortions and giving deadly drugs (drug), and maintaining strict confidentiality. Law, on the other hand, usually permits abortions under certain circumstances, may permit the giving of potentially lethal drugs in extreme situations, and sanctions the violation of confidentiality when the interests of society demand it. For example, in treating a patient dying of cancer, a physician might administer a potentially fatal experimental drug (with the patient's informed consent) in a desperate attempt to stop or slow down the cancer's growth. Virtually everywhere, physicians can legally perform abortions to save a pregnant patient's life.

      Although the Hippocratic oath has largely been superseded by such modern oaths as the Declaration of Geneva, the International Code of Medical Ethics, and the Canons of the American Medical Association, these codes of conduct retain the brevity and generality of the Hippocratic oath. For example, the International Code of Medical Ethics, developed and promulgated by the World Medical Association shortly after World War II, provides in part for the following:

A physician shall always exercise his or her professional judgment and maintain the highest standards of professional conduct.

A physician shall not allow his or her judgment to be influenced by personal profit or unfair discrimination.

A physician shall always bear in mind the obligation to respect human life.

A physician shall, when medically necessary, communicate with colleagues who are involved in the care of the same patient. This communication should respect patient confidentiality and be confined to necessary information.

      Modern advancements in the field of medicine, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR; restoration of regular rhythm to an arrhythmic or failed heart) and mechanical ventilators (which breathe for patients who are unable to use their lungs (lung)), sometimes have been able to postpone a death that previously had been imminent. Under these circumstances, it may be difficult to relate the rules of ethics to the realities of the situation. For example, the meaning of “obligation of preserving human life” becomes unclear in the context of a young woman in a permanent coma, who will probably die if the mechanical ventilator is removed but who may live for decades (in a coma) if the machine remains in place. It is not clear whether the Hippocratic ideal of doing “no harm” requires that the machine remain in place or that it be removed.

      In 1976 these same questions were confronted by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the landmark case of Karen Ann Quinlan. Her parents requested that physicians remove the mechanical ventilator in order to let their daughter die a natural death. The doctors refused, relying primarily on medical ethics, which they believed prohibited taking an action that might lead to the death of the patient.

      In court, however, the lawyers for the Quinlan family argued that what was at stake was not medical ethics but the legal rights of the individual patient to refuse medical treatment that was highly invasive and offered no chance for a cure. The court agreed that patients have the legal right to refuse medical treatment, determined that honouring such a refusal was consistent with medical ethics, and decided that the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan could exercise her right to refuse treatment on her behalf. In order to reassure the physicians involved, however, the court also decreed that if a hospital's ethics committee agreed with the prognosis of permanent coma, the removal of the ventilator could take place and all parties involved would have legal immunity from civil or criminal prosecution. Karen Ann Quinlan's ventilator was removed, although she continued to breathe on her own. She survived in a coma until she died of pneumonia almost 10 years later.

      The case of Karen Ann Quinlan became a paradigm of modern medicine and of the relationship between medical ethics and the law. Although an issue was made of medical ethics by both the physicians and the court, the case primarily involved medical practice and the fear of potential legal liability. Modern physicians worry about the law as well as ethics, and they fear criminal lawsuits that allege homicide or assisted suicide and civil lawsuits that allege malpractice. To address these concerns, the New Jersey court created an ethics committee with the power to grant legal immunity for actions and to diffuse the responsibility for them.

      This model has not been followed by other courts, although ethics committees have been established in North America, Europe, and Australia to help educate hospital staffs on such matters as the withholding and withdrawing of treatment and on general ethical conduct with patients. In fact, physicians are rarely taken to court on criminal charges for decisions about patient care that are made in good faith. The Massachusetts Supreme Court, for example, has summarized the criminal law in this regard:

Little need be said about criminal liability: there is precious little precedent, and what there is suggests that the doctor will be protected if he acts on a good faith judgment that is not grievously unreasonable by medical standards.

      In the United States, the Quinlan rationale has been expanded to include the right of all currently (and previously) mentally competent patients, whether terminally ill or not, to refuse any and all medical treatments (including artificial feedings). Artificial feeding nonetheless remains controversial among many religious groups, who in 2006 lobbied Congress to try to prevent the removal of a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, a woman who had suffered severe brain damage in 1990. The effort succeeded in Congress but failed in the courts because the law is clear: a person has a right to refuse treatment when he is competent, and should he become incompetent, the courts assess the person's wishes on the basis of prior expressions or, if these are not known, on an assessment of the patient's best interests. Some people state their wishes about treatment in documents called “living wills (will),” in which they specify as best they can what type of treatment they would want under various circumstances. Physicians can refer to a living will in trying to determine the wishes of a patient who is no longer able to speak for himself. Because it is almost impossible to predict when people will die, a better choice, promoted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (O'Connor, Sandra Day) in the case of Nancy Cruzan (a young woman in a similar condition as Karen Ann Quinlan but who needed continued tube feeding to survive), is a document that has come to be known as a “health care proxy.” In this document, an individual may provide someone else (such as a close relative or friend) with the authority to make decisions about medical treatment should he become incompetent to act on his own behalf. That person then has the same rights to accept or refuse medical treatment that the individual would have. The American Medical Association has stated that honouring patients' refusals of treatment is consistent with both medical practice and medical ethics. Other countries, such as The Netherlands, have gone further and have held that it is legally and ethically acceptable for physicians to assist a patient with a terminal illness in his or her decision to die by providing lethal injections (lethal injection). When this issue reached the U.S. Supreme Court (Supreme Court of the United States) in 1997, the court unanimously determined that all patients have the constitutional right to refuse any medical treatment. However, individual states can prohibit physicians from assisting in patient suicides, in part because of the danger that assisted suicide would pose to dying, sick, and socially isolated patients. Law and medical ethics are identical in this regard.

      While ethics and law are concerned with different concepts of right and wrong, in medicine they find common ground in their fundamental principles. Both law and ethics in medicine rest on the principle of self-determination by competent individuals, beneficence (or at least nonmaleficence) on the part of medical practitioners, and a concept of justice as fairness to be afforded to all patients by both medical practitioners and society.

Law and medical practice

      The law indirectly influences medical practice by structuring the delivery and financing of medical services, and it does so directly in three major ways: licensure requirements, restrictions on practice, and redress for wronged patients.

Government financing

 Societies differ as to the amount of health care that is provided by the government. In the United States, the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine concluded in 1983 that, even though access to health care might not be properly considered a legal right, “society has a moral obligation to ensure that everyone has access to adequate care without being subject to excessive burdens.” However, the market and its “managed care” model has failed to adequately address problems of cost and is unable to ensure either universal access or quality control. For example, the question of how the United States should make medical care accessible to its more than 40 million uninsured citizens remains a major public policy issue. Programs for governmental payment of medical bills are an example of law used as an instrument to effect social policy. Changing the laws regarding financing rules may in fact have more of an impact on medical practice than any other legal interventions.

License requirements for practice

      Legislative approaches to health care licensing have been divided into three general categories by Swiss legal scholar Jan Stepan: (1) exclusive or monopolistic systems, in which only the practice of modern, scientific medicine by professionals is lawful, (2) tolerant systems, in which only scientific medicine is officially sanctioned, although traditional medicine is tolerated, and (3) inclusive or integrated systems, in which either traditional medicine is recognized as a special part of the health system or the integration of two or more systems of health care is officially promoted.

The exclusive systems

      The exclusive system of licensing, which first emerged in Europe, involves granting licenses only to those who meet certain formal educational requirements; they are often required to pass a standardized examination and to demonstrate that they are of good moral character. The educational requirements usually apply to physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and other allied health professionals. Most of the medical schools in the world have similar courses of study, and a person who graduates from almost any of them receives the M.D. degree (Doctor of Medicine) and is entitled to sit for a licensure examination. In Britain and many Commonwealth countries the graduate receives a Bachelor of Medicine and either a Bachelor of Surgery or Bachelor of Chirurgery degree (M.B., B.S.; or M.B., Ch.B.); the M.D. is a higher degree that requires further study. The license to practice, called registration, is granted by the General Medical Council, which was established by the Medical Act of 1858.

      Because of the similarities between educational and practice patterns, physicians often may be allowed to practice in countries other than those in which they are registered. In the European Community, for example, physicians from one member country can practice in any other member country, although formal licensing in a particular country is still required.

      Legislatures originally adopted exclusive licensing in an effort to protect the public from untrained persons, in the belief that the public was not qualified to judge medical skills and could easily be taken advantage of by unqualified practitioners. Licenses are generally granted for life and can be lost only by criminal conduct, gross incompetence, or mental disability. Virtually every country in the world follows the European model of exclusive licensing, although many countries allow some flexibility in order to help ensure care in rural areas.

      The exclusive approach to medical care is best exemplified by the United States, where it is a criminal offense for anyone to practice medicine without a license. The practice of medicine is usually defined to include diagnosis, treatment, prescription, and surgery. Physicians may lawfully practice in any branch of medicine and any of its subspecialties, although hospitals and health plans may require that physicians obtain private certification by an appropriate medical board before they are permitted to practice a specialty. All other licensed health professionals are strictly limited by statute to the areas in which they may practice. For example, dentists must only do work relating to dentistry.

      Because the states retained direct powers over health care under the U.S. Constitution (Constitution of the United States of America), all licenses for health professionals are granted by the individual states. Licensing is regulated by administrative agencies, usually called state licensing boards, and licenses are valid only in the state issuing the license. Most states, however, grant a license by reciprocity upon request from a licensed physician, nurse, pharmacist, or dentist who is in good standing in another state. Licensing rules governing dentistry and pharmacy are parallel to medical licensure; the candidate must have graduated from a professional school, have passed an examination, and be of good moral character to be licensed by a state board set up for that purpose.

      Registered nurses (RNs) are required to have graduated from a preparatory nursing program (with a bachelor's degree, associate degree, or diploma from a hospital-based program) and to have passed an examination. Licensed practical nurses (LPNs), on the other hand, generally have to complete a one-year vocational program after graduating from high school. Nurse's aides are required to have 75 hours of state-approved training, as well as an annual 12 hours of continuing education. In almost all countries, national and local nursing associations are instrumental in proposing legislation for licensing or registration and in securing amendments to broaden the scope of nursing practices. Other health practitioners, including acupuncturists, midwives, and physicians assistants, as well as some nurse practitioners, generally must practice under the supervision of or in cooperation with a licensed physician.

The tolerant systems

      The tolerant system is best exemplified in Britain, where there is no formal legal monopoly of medicine. The protected status is that of registered medical practitioner. Under the Medical Act of 1978, persons who have fulfilled statutory education and examination requirements are entitled to be registered. Registered physicians have certain exclusive rights, such as employment by the National Health Service, prescribing, issuing medical certificates, and holding appointments in public hospitals. It is an offense to imply falsely that one is registered, but it is not an offense otherwise to engage in healing. Osteopaths, chiropractors, and acupuncturists may practice in the private sector.

The inclusive and integrated systems

      The inclusive and integrated systems are represented by countries such as India (Indian law) and China. In India the individual states regulate the practice of the health professions. A Medical Council maintains the Indian Medical Register, and any person on this register may practice anywhere in India. There are also state medical registers for the individual states, and people in these registers are also in the Indian Medical Register. Those who have obtained a degree from a university, usually M.B., B.S., or the qualification of licensed medical practitioner (L.M.P.), are entered in these registers. Qualifications from many foreign countries are also recognized for entry to the registers.

      China (Chinese law) provides an example of an integrated system in which traditional Chinese doctors and Western-trained physicians often practice side by side. The country has also developed a system in which certain persons receive a short, intensive training course and then provide primary health care in areas otherwise not served by health care workers.

Legal restrictions on practice

Determination of death

      The law generally supports customary medical practice and provides the medical profession with a great deal of autonomy. A dramatic example is the determination of death and the issuance of a death certificate. In almost every country of the world, a physician declares a person dead and issues a death certificate after a determination of death is made in accordance with accepted medical standards. However, some confusion persists as to whether physicians should continue to be given the authority to declare a person dead if the medical profession were to adopt whole brain death as an acceptable definition of death (instead of the past definition of irreversible cessation of respiration (respiration, human) and heartbeat).

      A mechanical ventilator can artificially maintain the respiration and circulation of a person whose functions would cease without such mechanical support. In the late 1960s the potentials of organ transplantation (transplant) from such persons were becoming realized, and the seeming futility of devoting limited medical resources to maintaining circulation under such circumstances was of growing concern. Physicians began proposing that irreversible cessation of brain activity be used as an alternative definition of death. Since that time, most Western countries and Japan have adopted this definition, by either continuing to permit physicians to declare death, passing a specific statute endorsing this definition, or issuing court opinions giving approval to physicians' declarations of death in such circumstances. The law, in short, has continued to defer to medical practice in the definition of death itself, and it is likely to continue to do so as long as physicians base their determination of death on either permanent cessation of respiration and circulation or permanent cessation of all functions of the brain.

Termination (abortion) of pregnancy

       pregnancy termination remains a contentious medical procedure, even though it is a procedure about which women in many countries have been granted a constitutional right to decide. Physicians have broad legal authority and discretion in other controversial areas as well. In countries such as the United States, where the law permits termination of pregnancy prior to fetal viability, or thereafter, if the life or health of the pregnant woman is at stake, it is for the physician, and not the state, to determine whether or not an individual fetus is viable (i.e., capable of living independently of its mother); the determination must be made consistent with accepted medical criteria. When the Supreme Court declared that the decision to terminate a pregnancy was protected by the U.S. Constitution, the court emphasized that the decision should be made by a woman and her physician. In any case, the determination of whether a woman's life or health is at risk is a medical determination to be made by the attending physician. The law may restrict procedures like termination of pregnancy, sterilization, and even birth control to mature minors and adults; but it is generally left to the physician to determine if a patient is mature or competent to consent. In 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court made a dramatic exception to this rule in the case of a procedure that was labeled by Congress as “partial-birth” abortion (a surgical abortion in which a late-term fetus is removed through the cervix). In a 5–4 opinion, the Supreme Court permitted Congress to entirely outlaw this procedure on the basis that Congress could determine that its use undercut medical ethics and that other less-offensive procedures were available to safeguard the life and health of pregnant women seeking abortions.

Sudden death

      Unexpected deaths must be reported to public authorities so that a determination can be made as to whether the death was a homicide, a suicide, or an accident. It is up to an investigator, whether he or she is called a medical examiner or coroner or has some other title, to make a preliminary finding and then to refer the case to the police or prosecuting authorities if criminal activity is suspected. In most Western countries, this person has either legal training or medical training or both. In the United States, some jurisdictions use an elected coroner (who may or may not have medical training); however, the trend is toward a medical examiner system in which a physician is appointed to the post. Coroners in London are qualified both in medicine and in law. The principal evidence received by the coroner is the report of the autopsy carried out on the body of the deceased.

Public reporting

      Physicians may also be expected to report certain patients or occurrences to public authorities. For example, some communicable diseases are required to be reported to public health officials. Suspected child abuse and gunshot wounds may have to be reported to an authority (such as the child welfare authority or the police). Public reporting tends to put the physician in the position of being an agent of the state rather than of his patient, making mandatory reporting an uncomfortable duty. It is not surprising, therefore, that the incidence of public reporting is generally much lower by private physicians than it is in hospital emergency departments.

      In extreme cases, physicians may also have a duty to protect specific individuals who may be at serious or mortal risk from their patients. For example, the California Supreme Court decreed that a psychologist had a “duty to protect” a person whom his patient had threatened to kill, if the psychologist believed “or should have believed” the threat to be real. In that particular case the patient, a graduate student, left the psychologist's care and murdered his former girlfriend, an action that the psychologist believed was so likely that he had sought unsuccessfully to have his patient involuntarily committed.

Legal redress

 When patients are injured by medical negligence, the remedies they can pursue depend upon the country's legal system. In the United States, for example, lawsuits against physicians for negligent injury are not considered unusual.

      Malpractice, or professional negligence, is the failure of a health care provider (for example, a physician, dentist, nurse, or pharmacist) to exercise the ordinary care and skill a reasonably prudent, qualified person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances. The practitioner does not guarantee the outcome but must use diligence and ordinary skill in the treatment of a patient.

      A valid malpractice claim must have four elements: duty, breach, damages, and causation. The plaintiff must prove each of these elements by a preponderance of evidence (more likely than not to be true). The practitioner must be shown to have a relationship to the patient (which establishes a duty to exercise ordinary care), must have breached that duty (as measured by the applicable standard of care), and through the breach must have caused the patient physical and monetary damages.

      The central concern for physicians is usually to establish the standard of care through expert testimony, which may simply be the testimony of another qualified physician. Such testimony is necessary because the standard of medical practice is not something a lay jury is familiar with. Expert witnesses may themselves rely on the standards that have been set down by one or more medical speciality organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. These medical speciality organizations provide certification to physicians who have fulfilled postgraduate training and practice requirements in the speciality. Medical specialty organizations maintain the standards necessary to practice in the specialities and provide reasonable assurance to patients that these standards will be upheld. Nonconformance with such standards by a specialist is evidence of negligence, although it is not conclusively negligence (the practitioner may have a valid excuse for not following custom, such as an emergency situation or lack of equipment). Conformance with the standards is evidence of due care, but it is not conclusive because other factors may have caused the physician's action to be imprudent under the circumstances.

      If a practitioner consistently performs below the profession's standard of care (i.e., the practitioner is a negligent physician who does not actually harm anyone) the remedy is not a malpractice action but a complaint to the licensing or registration authority to have the individual disciplined. Disciplinary action by public licensing authorities, however, is unusual.

      Medical malpractice actions have three basic functions: quality control, compensation for harm, and emotional vindication, all of which are achieved to varying degrees. Quality control is probably best achieved, since the standard of care is set by physicians themselves and enforced by patients and juries. Compensation for harm is greatly skewed toward major injuries. Attorneys in the United States, for example, represent malpractice cases on a contingency fee basis—i.e., they are paid a proportion (usually 20–40 percent) of the total amount awarded to the plaintiff. Patients who suffer less severe injuries may have little redress for compensation. In countries that have a system of national health insurance, compensation for harm may not be a major issue (since all medical bills are paid regardless of cause). However, litigation is usually necessary to obtain compensation for noneconomic damages, usually referred to as “pain and suffering,” which essentially means the impact the injury has on the patient's life. Countries with comprehensive social services for all citizens, like Sweden and New Zealand, have effectively developed “no fault” compensation systems. But in the United States, where more than 40 million people do not have any form of health care insurance, lack of coverage can transform a medically induced injury into a financial catastrophe.

      Emotional vindication is a measure of the consumer's ability to make a complaint as well as to get a satisfactory response. A comparison in consumer complaints between the United States and Britain indicates that U.S. citizens file claims against physicians more than 10 times as often as their British counterparts. American law professor Frances Miller noted that many cultural and practical reasons serve to explain this difference, including different legal systems and rules, access to attorneys and courts, the method of paying for medical expenses, the special status of the National Health Service in Britain, and the existence of alternative complaint procedures.

      Perhaps the most important development in quality assurance is the growing patient safety movement—a movement based on the U.S. Institute of Medicine's finding that more than 100,000 patients a year lose their lives in U.S. hospitals. Most of these deaths are due to negligent actions of health care providers and can be dramatically reduced by simple preventative measures, including routine hand washing, use of electronic medical records, and careful identification of individual patients and their conditions.

Patients' rights

      In addition to granting patients the means for the effective redress for negligent injury (which increases the cost of malpractice insurance for physicians—and thus the cost of medical care), malpractice litigation has also promoted what have come to be called patients' rights.

      Patients' rights are based upon two fundamental premises: (1) the patient has certain interests, many of which may be properly described as rights, that are not automatically forfeited by entering into a relationship with a doctor or health care facility; and (2) doctors and health care facilities may fail to recognize the existence of these interests and rights, fail to provide for their protection or assertion, and frequently limit their exercise without recourse.

      Perhaps the most important development in patients' rights has been that in the United States regarding the doctrine of informed consent. Originally articulated in the 1947 Nuremberg Code as applied to human experimentation, today it applies to medical treatment as well. This doctrine requires physicians to share certain information with patients before asking for their consent to treatment. The doctrine is particularly applicable to the use of surgery, drugs (drug), and invasive diagnostic procedures that carry risks. It requires the physician to describe the procedure or treatment recommended and to list its major risks, benefits, alternatives, and likely prospect for recuperation. The purpose is to promote self-determination by patients on the theory that it is the patient who has the most at stake in treatment and who relies largely on the physician for such information. British courts have rejected this formulation on the basis that the average British citizen does not want such information, and British physicians do not generally provide it unless requested.

      Although the patients' rights movement began in the United States in the early 1970s, the most articulate and complete statement regarding patients' rights appears in the 1997 Council of Europe (Europe, Council of) Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. The general purpose of the convention is to “protect the dignity and identity of all human beings and guarantee everyone, without discrimination, respect for their integrity and other rights and fundamental freedoms with regard to the applications of biology and medicine.” Specific human rights included in the convention are equitable access to health care, informed consent, rights to emergency care, and respect for privacy and confidentiality. The convention also contains specific rules regarding the human genome, human experimentation, and organ donation. The provisions of the convention are to be judicially enforced by the courts in the countries party to the convention.

      The 1997 Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine forms part of an international trend, particularly in public health, in which physicians and lawyers work together to improve the health of populations and to secure human rights. American epidemiologist Jonathan M. Mann labeled this the “Health and Human Rights” movement. This movement grew out of the HIV/AIDS (AIDS) epidemic and the recognition that an effective response to the epidemic required taking human rights seriously, especially rights to nondiscrimination, education, equality of women, and access to health care. Physicians and lawyers often work together in nongovernmental organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, Physicians for Human Rights, and Global Lawyers and Physicians, to try to improve health and human rights on an international level. Although a daunting task given the variety of specific problems and institutional settings in which health care is delivered around the world, it is possible that an international patient bill of rights will be developed in the future.

      Many hospitals (hospital) and health care organizations have adopted their own patient bill of rights, often modifying the rights to suit the needs of the health care services and the needs of patients. Basic rights of a patient should include rights to clear communication; accurate information concerning possible medical care and procedures; informed participation in all decisions about the patient's health care program; and a clear, concise explanation of all proposed procedures, including possible risks, side effects, and problems related to recuperation.

      Patients also should have rights regarding quality of care, including rights to an accurate evaluation of their condition and prognosis without treatment; knowledge of the identity and professional status of those providing services; information contained in their medical record; access to consultant specialists; and refusal of treatment.

      The patient should have basic human rights, including the right to privacy of both person and information, the right of access to people outside the health care facility, and the right to leave the health care facility regardless of his or her condition.

      Until the 1960s, law and medicine met only in the courtroom, and even then they met usually only in cases involving pathology or psychiatry. Since then, however, civil litigation, public financing, and ethical issues have grown, at least partially as a result of the incredible successes of medicine. These successes have increased public expectations and costs of medical care and have made decisions about terminating care more ambiguous. The importance of health and human rights and enhancing patients' rights are two contemporary concerns on which both medical and legal practitioners agree.

George J. Annas

Additional Reading

Useful general sources of information on health law include Barry R. Furrow et al., Health Law: Cases, Materials, and Problems, 6th ed. (2007); and Mark A. Hall, Mary Anne Bobinski, and David Orentlicher, Health Care Law and Ethics, 6th ed. (2003).Works about bioethics and law include Michael H. Shapiro et al., Cases, Materials, and Problems on Bioethics and Law, 2nd ed. (2003); and George J. Annas, American Bioethics: Crossing Human Rights and Health Law Boundaries (2005).Health and human rights are covered in Sofia Gruskin, Michael A. Grodin, George J. Annas, and Stephen P. Marks (eds.), Perspectives on Health and Human Rights (2005). Patients' rights in view of the law of informed consent are explored in George J. Annas, The Rights of Patients, 3rd ed. (2004).Works about medical malpractice and patient safety include Linda T. Kohn, Janet M. Corrigan, and Molla S. Donaldson (eds.), To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (1999); and Patricia M. Danzon, Medical Malpractice: Theory, Evidence, and Public Policy (1985).George J. Annas

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