Published in:
01-09-2013 | Letter to the Editor
Legal medicine contributions to patient safety. From ascertainment and evaluation to research in medical liability
Authors:
E. L. Gómez-Durán, C. Martin-Fumadó, J. Arimany-Manso
Published in:
International Journal of Legal Medicine
|
Issue 5/2013
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Excerpt
We would like to congratulate Ferrara et al. for their thoughtful Guidelines on Methods of Ascertainment and Criteria of Evaluation in cases of suspected subjective medical liability [
1]. Medical errors, patient safety and professional liability are worldwide concerns nowadays [
2,
3]. Regulatory frameworks and national operative systems are certainly different from one country to another [
2], but the scientific approach to cases ascertainment should not differ substantially across borders and this Guidelines will help favour the desired harmonisation of European legal medicine [
4]. This homogenization of methods of ascertainment will definitively contribute to strengthen the guarantees in professional liability procedures, but this first step should be followed by a shift to prevention and patient safety. Claims data analysis could be the pathway to that new scenario. …