• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.345-366
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• 2014

Because the health care or medical sector has such characteristics as publicity, professionality, and exclusivity, it cannot be left to the free market system. As a consequence, the state has restricted the establishment of medical institutions in order to protect the life and health of people. Also, the medical law has regulated to permit the establishment of medical institutions by only medical personnel and a few corporate bodies and to ban the establishment of medical institutions under disguised ownership as well as double opening of medical institutions by medical personnel. Nevertheless, there are still many cases that non-medical personnel have dominantly established medical institutions under disguised ownership of other medical personnel or nonprofit corporation. Because they are willing to recover their investment costs as soon as possible, these illegally established medical institutions are likely to make patients undergo unnecessary tests or to perform the excessive treatments and, as a result, are likely to cause infringement on the health and lives of the people. In addition, even if the misconduct is uncovered, the rate at which the costs already paid is very low and, as a result, the damages are straightly connected to the people's loss. On the other hand, there are also increasing number of cases that medical personnel or nonprofit corporations are establishing medical institutions against the medical law regulations. The examples of this illegality are also the double opening of medical institutions and the establishment of medical institutions under disguised ownership by medical personnel or nonprofit corporations. And the damages in these cases may not differ from those in the above cases. In this study, regarding medical law regulations restricting opening a medical institution, I will review the intent of those regulations, the type of violations and criminal punishments, and the possibility of recovery from unlawful profit by the National Health Insurance Act. And then, I would like to find a way for rational improvement of each.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.3-35
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• 2017

The Supreme Court of Korea first admitted compensation for damages caused by breach of informed consent in 1979. From then on, specific details of informed consent are shaping up and developing through court precedents. The duty of informed consent of doctor is based on article 10 of the Constitution and medical contract, and is expressly prescribed Article 12 of Framework Act on Health and Medical Services and other acts and regulations. By the way, the regulations about duty of informed consent of doctor have been established in Medical Law revised on December 20, 2016, and the revised Medical Law will be implemented on June 21, 2017. According to the revised Medical Law, medical practices subject to description and consent are operation, blood transfusion and general anesthesia that threaten to cause serious harm to human life or to the body. When performing these medical activities, the written consent must be explained and agreed upon in advance. If a doctor violates the law, he will incur fines of less than 3 million won. Comparing and viewing the revised Medical Law and existing legal principles about the duty of informed consent, we can confirm that there is a substantial difference between the two parties. Accordingly, despite the implementation of the revised medical law, the existing legal principles are unlikely to be affected. However, from the perspective of legal uniformity and stability, it is undesirable that legal judgments on the same issues differ from each other. The revised Medical Law about informed consent needs to be reformed according to existing legal principles. And, as in the case of Germany, it is desirable to include the matters concerning informed consent in the civil code.

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.195-196
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• 2000

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.209-236
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• 2013

The concept of expectation rights considers 'the expectation' that the patient should be given proper medical treatment as the benefit and protection of the law, so it would be the benefit and protection of the law due to personal rights different from 'the legal principle that has the possibility to a considerable extent' being in an extension of life and body. However, the problem how the patient's expectation of medical service sets up in order to make it the benefit and protection of the law would be still left in the vague concept of the patient's 'expectation', thus, in the first place, the medical practice following formed medical standard in every particular medical institutes should be the standard because these medical services are normally within a range of the patients' expectations. In addition, it should be naturally constituted as mental profit to get the subjective circumstances such as 'the patient's expectation' to be an object, and also, different from the profit and protection of the law such as life and body that should be absolutely protected, the origin of violation behavior should be regarded simultaneously to define the denotation of expectation rights. Therefore, the expectation rights violations would be problematic in case it fails to reach the medical standard that is expected for common doctors to practice properly. This is the concept of expectation rights that gets subjective matters such as the patient's expectation to be objectivity as medical practices that can be expected by generalized abstract doctors. This standard should be defined as the minimum standard that is naturally expected for doctors to practice, different from medical standard that decides the level of doctors.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.81-111
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• 2018

Recently in Korea, public interest about patient safety has increased because patient safety incidents occurred continuously. In addition, as the way of coping with medical personnel and medical institutions after occurrence of patient safety incident became controversial, the necessity of introducing apology law and disclosure law was raised. We analyzed the contents of apology law and disclosure law in U.S.A and critically examined the legislative movements in Korea. First, the Apology law requires that a medical personnel provide apology, consolation, sympathy to the patient for discomfort, pain, damage or death, and that the expression of apology shall be inadmissible as evidence of an admission of liability in civil action or administrative proceeding. The Apology law is divided into 'full apology law' and 'partial apology law' depending on whether mistake, error, fault, liability, and legal liability shall be inadmissible. Meanwhile, Disclosure law enforces or voluntarily enforces the law to communicate with the patient regarding the disclosure of the incident, the cause of incident, the compensation plan, and the measures to prevent the recurrence in the adverse incident that serious harm to the patient. In Korea, the concern about patient safety incidents has been amplified, and as the importance of communication between the medical personnel and patient has been recognized, the revision bill for the "Patient Safety Act", which adopted the U.S.A apology or disclosure law, was submitted to the National Assembly. The purpose of this study was to critically review the contents of the revised legislation based on the analysis of the apology law and disclosure law in U.S.A. and to provide implications for future legislative direction.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.227-251
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• 2014

In current law, the premium medical treatment system gives patients the right of choice between normal medical treatment service and premium medical treatment service. Only the doctors having a career more than a certain period of time fixed in the law are eligible for providing the premium medical treatment service. So, the premium medical treatment system is highly related to the patients' right to know and the right of self-determination. The system is also relevant to the so-called 'economic explanation' notion because patients should pay additional fee when they want to use this system. Meanwhile, the situation as follows is problematic as to this system. Although a patient applied for using the premium medical treatment system and the patient also chose his or her own doctor specifically, another doctor who was not selected as premium doctor could make a medical accident. Then, is the another doctor liable for damages because the accident was a medical malpractice or a breach of medical contract? In this study, we are going to examine the problems related with the premium medical treatment system. First, we examine the current law related to the system. Second, we look into the economic explanation duty and its application to the premium medical treatment system. Finally, we examine a real judgment case about a medical practice against the premium medical treatment system and we propose our solution to this case.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.27-34
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• 2011

It is very important to justify the reasonable role of healthcare facilities in the law in order to provide considerable medical services to the patient. Defining the right role of healthcare facilities makes it possible to build adequate Health Care Delivery System which might be helpful for the patient. However, the information of healthcare facilities in Korean law is so unclear that people are able to hardly understand what sort of proper medical service is for them. Furthermore, there is not enough regulation to differentiate each type of hospitals in the law. The result of this study is summarized into three points. Firstly, the current medical law does not reflect differences of function which each medical facility has. Secondly, the method of classification of healthcare facilities in the law disagrees with the Health Care Delivery System. Finally, there is no information on the type of sickbed in the law. Therefore, this study intend to analyze cause of problems which the law contains in order to be used for the fundamental resource for the healthcare facility planning.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.189-217
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• 2011

According to the current law of national health insurance, the Minister of Health and Welfare can impose a suspension of business or license, and a fine with medical institutions who violate the law. In case that medical institutions raise an action for ity with each penalty, they ask for replacing the suspension of business with a fine during the pendency of the action. But there is a long gap of time between an offense and administrative measures. One violation cause several types of administrative measures (suspension of business or fine, suspension of license etc.) and different government departments impose these penalties. It takes a lot of time to organize their opinions and they are liable to impose penalties after considerable space of time because of overwhelming tasks. Then the medical institutions can sustain a loss by getting unexpected administrative measures after their offense against the law. Thus, this article review whether extinctive prescription apply to the right of imposing fine on the law of national health insurance or not. Meanwhile, we have no regulations imposing a same fine to co-representatives of medical institution who infringe the law of national health insurance. On this point, this study review whether they have equal duty on that or not.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.253-263
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• 1998

To provide physical therapy service of good quality keeping people healthy and obstain structural reformation coping with the demands of in medical service market to foreign intercourse on 21C, we should make legal system fer the physical therapy practice. Thus we suggest the Ministry of Health and Health and the authorities should, 1. Exclude the provision of physical therapist from the classfication of medical technician on the Medical Technician Law Article 2. and establish the independent Physical Therapist Law 2. Eliminate the provision of physician or dentist's guide the Medical Technician Law Article 1. or reform it to physician or dentist's request so that physical therapists may have a independent practice, or 3. Add the provision of the physical therapy center to the Medical Technician Law, the enforcement ordinances and enforcement regulations, such as the provision of optometrist or dental technician.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.179-218
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• 2006

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.