The Medical Expert in the Physician Liability Process: What has Changed Since the Enactment of the Patient Rights Act (PatRG)?

Abstract

In February 2013, the law on the improvement of the rights of patients enacted a whole series of legal regulations for different areas of health care. In terms of physician liability, the Patient Rights Act and the introduction of sections 630a-h in the Civil Code (BGB) brought a transparency-oriented representation of general contractual aspects, a comprehensive legal regulation regarding patient education and consent, standardization of the treatment documentation, and a new basis for the right of access to the treatment file. The specificities of the treatment contract developed in the framework of supreme judicial jurisprudence were translated into legal form, and the presumed facts known from established case law and considered favorable to the patient under certain conditions were then summarized as exceptions to the principle of the objective burden of proof. In this paper the regulations in the new sections 630a-h of the Civil Code are presented and examined with regard to the consequences to be taken into account by the medical expert in the physician liability process.