No-fault Law on Medical Accidents in Belgium: An Evaluation after Six Years
-
Thierry Vansweevelt
,
Steven Lierman
Abstract
After many years of criticism of the medical malpractice system based on negligence, Belgium introduced a law on medical accidents in March 2010. This law created a Medical Accidents Fund. Under this two-track system the victim of a medical accident has the choice to file a claim before the court or to seek compensation from the Fund. The Law on Medical Accidents has four objectives: (1) to create a Fund with a simple and fast procedure that is cost-free to access, (2) to channel and centralise all medical accident claims to the Fund, and to develop a prevention strategy, (3) to compensate more victims by introducing a personal right to compensation for medical accident victims without the need to consider liability, and finally, (4) to achieve a balanced budget. A medical accident without liability can be defined as an accident caused by healthcare which does not lead to the liability of a caregiver, does not result from the patient’s health condition and causes abnormal damage to the patient. The damage is abnormal if it was not supposed to occur given the current state of scientific knowledge, the patient’s health condition and its objectively predictable evolution. Following analysis of the new law, this study shows that it has created a single, central point of contact that is easily accessible and generally understood by medical accident victims. On average fifty new cases a month are submitted to the Fund. In a reasonable number of cases to date, liability of the caregiver has been accepted by the Fund. However, the Fund is rather strict in awarding no-fault compensation for medical accidents without liability. It remains to be seen whether this interpretation can resist the test of judicial review.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Common Law Codification: Lessons and Warnings from Twenty-First Century Australia
- Simplifying the Complexities of Negligence Law – A Joint Academic/Judicial Proposal
- No-fault Law on Medical Accidents in Belgium: An Evaluation after Six Years
- What’s in a Name? The Case for Protecting the Reputation of Businesses under Article 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights
- Book Review
- Piotr Machnikowski (ed), European Product Liability: An Analysis of the State of the Art in the Era of New Technologies (Intersentia, Cambridge 2016). ix+705pp. ISBN 978-1-78068-398–0. $141.51 (paperback).
- Vanessa Wilcox, A Company’s Right to Damages for Non-pecuniary Loss (Cambridge University Press 2016). xxxiv + 192 pp. ISBN 9781107139275. £21.99 (hardback).
- J Le Bourg/C Quézel-Ambrunaz (eds), Sens et non-sens de la responsabilité civile (Université Savoie Mont Blanc 2018). 444 pp. ISBN 978-2-919732-88–3. € 30 (paperback).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Common Law Codification: Lessons and Warnings from Twenty-First Century Australia
- Simplifying the Complexities of Negligence Law – A Joint Academic/Judicial Proposal
- No-fault Law on Medical Accidents in Belgium: An Evaluation after Six Years
- What’s in a Name? The Case for Protecting the Reputation of Businesses under Article 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights
- Book Review
- Piotr Machnikowski (ed), European Product Liability: An Analysis of the State of the Art in the Era of New Technologies (Intersentia, Cambridge 2016). ix+705pp. ISBN 978-1-78068-398–0. $141.51 (paperback).
- Vanessa Wilcox, A Company’s Right to Damages for Non-pecuniary Loss (Cambridge University Press 2016). xxxiv + 192 pp. ISBN 9781107139275. £21.99 (hardback).
- J Le Bourg/C Quézel-Ambrunaz (eds), Sens et non-sens de la responsabilité civile (Université Savoie Mont Blanc 2018). 444 pp. ISBN 978-2-919732-88–3. € 30 (paperback).
