Author of the article: Anastasia Ivanova Last modified: February 2021 1046
Law No. 323-FZ of November 21, 2011 establishes the protection of the health of citizens in Russia as a priority state task. If you feel unwell or are diagnosed with an illness, you must contact a clinic or hospital with an insurance policy. But not all medical workers fulfill their duties conscientiously. It happens that medical negligence leads not only to deterioration of health, but also to the death of the patient. To protect your interests, you can contact higher authorities. A complaint will help not only to defend your rights, but also to change the behavior of a medical worker.
Characteristics of the crime of medical negligence
There is no individual article or legal norm regarding the negligence of medical workers, and their causing damage to the physical well-being of patients or premature death must be considered as neglect of duty. The duties of any official mean actions and behavior patterns that are prescribed to him by various norms specified in laws, rules, regulations, instructions or other documents and regulating his professional activities.
As an official, a doctor can commit a crime in cases where the decision he makes is capable of adversely affecting the health of the patient or causing death. Based on this, the crime is characterized by a combination of the following facts:
- Objectivity, expressed in the presence of an official duty that was not fulfilled by the doctor due to laziness, carelessness or underestimation of the seriousness of the situation, and this led to devastating consequences. The cause-and-effect relationship must be obvious and formalized, since the presence of an uncertainty factor during treatment frees medical staff from responsibility, because they could not know about the occurrence of negative consequences and took a justifiable medical risk.
- Subjectivity, determined by the presence of a specific medical professional whose actions led to a deterioration in the physical well-being of the patient or his death.
- Damage, which consists of a recorded event of deterioration in the patient’s well-being or death, which has a direct relationship with the treatment procedure due to known side effects of drugs or treatment procedures.
If all of the listed signs of a criminal act are present, it can be classified under Article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in its first part, if health is damaged, as well as the second or third when recording a single or multiple death of patients, respectively.
Sample application to the investigative committee for medical error
Here the patient will need to present all the evidence that he has, as well as explain the current situation in detail. Insurance officials will need to review your case and conduct a detailed examination of the actions performed by the doctor. Based on the results of the examination, a fine will be imposed on the medical institution where the medical error was made.
- Judicial authorities. You will need to bring to court not only all paper evidence, but also a claim in which you write in detail your demands to the defendant. Application to the Obep for fraud sample for an employee? The case will be carefully considered in court. This will most likely require attending a number of court proceedings, the result of which will most likely be the receipt of the required compensation.
- Prosecutor's office. You can contact us here if you want to initiate criminal proceedings against a person who has committed a medical error.
- How to prove medical negligence?
- We are writing a statement
- Article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - medical negligence. Bringing a doctor to justice in 2021
The head of the Trans-Baikal Human Rights Center, Anastasia Kopteeva, confirmed to Meduza that investigators are raising cases from the archives that, in her words, “were of no interest to anyone” before. “For some, the statute of limitations has passed or refusal orders have been issued,” adds the human rights activist. Thus, Kopteeva learned from the Investigative Committee employees that a criminal case could be opened against the doctor, who was accused of a mistake by one of the human rights activist’s clients - while the court had previously considered this case and refused to initiate a case, limiting itself to a fine for the mistake. Concept and statistics of medical errors in Russia First of all, the victim should understand that the law will be on his side, since medical error is a criminal offense. However, it has a number of features, many of which you need to know.
Where to complain about medical negligence?
The first instance to which an appeal must be made is the direct management of the doctor who has committed negligence in his duties, leading to adverse consequences, in the person of the chief physician of the medical institution. A similar procedure is drawn up in the form of a free-form application, which indicates all significant circumstances that allow the health worker’s misconduct to be classified as negligence and indicating the relationship between the treatment undertaken and the deterioration in well-being. The result of delivery of such an appeal, with a registration mark on the second copy, may result in disciplinary and/or financial impact by the head physician on a subordinate, therefore it is advisable to use this method in case of minor damage to health.
If an appeal to a senior medical worker is left without attention and an appropriate response, which must be sent by mail or delivered in person, then the next authority will be an appeal to the Ministry of Health, which is the highest level of the medical hierarchy and is obliged to take corrective action against personnel who have neglected their official duties, consisting usually in disciplinary punishment or dismissal of the guilty person and the head of the medical institution. An appeal to ministerial workers is drawn up in the same way as an application addressed to the head physician of a hospital, with the exception of the addressee and differences in the descriptive part of the incident, which includes a statement of details of the appeal to the head of the medical worker guilty of negligent attitude towards work.
What liability does a doctor bear for negligence?
Attention! An employee of a medical institution who has committed improper performance of official duties, resulting in harm to the life and health of a citizen, may be held liable for the following types of liability:
- disciplinary. The employee may be reprimanded, reprimanded, or fired;
- material. The employee may be deprived of his bonus. Both the employee who committed negligence and the manager of this employee are held liable;
- civil law. A citizen who has suffered from the negligence of medical workers has the right to demand payment of compensation for damage caused, as well as for moral damage;
- criminal Applies if, as a result of the negligence of a medical worker, serious harm, including death, was caused to the health of a citizen.
In addition, for the negligence shown by an employee, the medical institution in which this employee works may be fined.
The doctor made the wrong diagnosis: how to punish him?
How to write a complaint to the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, read here.
What to do if you are denied hospitalization, read the link:
How to open a criminal case for medical negligence?
Despite the presence of signs of a criminal offense, the fact of a connivance towards official duties on the part of a doctor is not considered by law enforcement agencies represented by the police and there is no point in filing a complaint with the police.
The prosecutor's office is authorized to conduct inspections in relation to any commercial and government institutions regarding compliance by staff with the rules of legality and legality of actions. Filing a statement of negligence committed by a doctor is a necessary procedure so that a check is carried out regarding the fact of harm to health and, if there is evidence of a crime, a criminal case is opened. In parallel with submitting a written application to the prosecutor's office at the scene of the incident, an appeal of similar content should be sent to the territorial body of Roszdravnadzor, whose functions include monitoring the activities of medical institutions in terms of organizing the treatment of patients, including.
Applications submitted to control and supervisory authorities must include an indication of the address, which is the name of the body and the applicant with his personal data allowing for feedback. The text of the appeal must contain:
- Description of the circumstances of harm to human health or causing the death of the patient, indicating the date of the incident, the period of treatment, treatment procedures and measures, the responsible health worker who made certain decisions regarding the content of treatment and the prescription of drugs that led to undesirable consequences.
- A statement of the history of interaction with the management of the medical institution and the relevant Ministry in terms of establishing the doctor’s guilt in negligent attitude towards his official duties and taking administrative measures against him.
- A request to verify the legality of the attending physician’s actions and establish the corpus delicti under Article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation or other signs of an unlawful act.
- A petition to satisfy certain requirements: compensation for material, physical and moral damage or bringing the perpetrator to criminal liability.
Copies of all available documents that can confirm the presence of a crime should be attached to the application and listed as attachments in the text.
Any written application must be completed with the applicant’s handwritten signature and the date of its writing.
Below you will find an example of a statement to the prosecutor's office for medical negligence. It is also possible.
Complaint against a doctor
The reason for my appeal was the negligent attitude towards his duties by the general practitioner of the Regional State Budgetary Institution No. 195 Arkady Aleksandrovich Polishchuk, namely the failure to take measures to make a correct diagnosis. As a result of this attitude, my health was damaged.
You can file a complaint against the doctor if you do not agree with the treatment methods.
Write a complaint against the doctor using our sample. After the inspection, you can go to court with a claim for compensation for harm to health. Before filing a complaint against a doctor, it makes sense to verbally contact his supervisor and voice your complaints.
Medical malpractice litigation
Going to court without an attempt at pre-trial resolution of the conflict in the form of an appeal to the head physician and the Ministry of Health, as well as without an inspection by the prosecutor's office and Roszdravnadzor into the negligent actions of an official, is futile and will not be accepted for proceedings due to the lack of any evidence established causally - investigative connections and validity of the applicant’s claims.
It is necessary to contact the justice authorities only if a prosecutorial/supervisory inspection is refused or to appeal the results of its conduct. Judicial resolution of the conflict is allowed when the plaintiff demands to recover material damages from medical negligence.
Punishment for medical negligence resulting in the death of a patient
If a health worker improperly performs or fails to fulfill his official duties, if this leads to the death of the patient, he is subject to punishment under Part 2 of Article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which provides in such cases:
- five years of forced labor followed by a ban on medical practice for no more than 3 years;
- imprisonment for up to 5 years and a subsequent ban on treating people for another three years after release.
The age of the deceased is not an aggravating factor when determining a preventive measure for a doctor who, due to negligence in his official duties, allowed the death of a patient. That is, punishment for the death of a minor or minor patient occurs under Part 2 of Art. 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
Examples of judicial practice:
In 2008, the federal court of the Central District of Tolyatti sentenced a neurosurgeon and the head of the department to suspended sentences, depriving them of the right to practice medicine for three years, because they had discharged without further treatment a person of no fixed abode, who subsequently died from a diagnosed disease. .
In 2007, a resuscitator-anesthesiologist at the regional specialized infectious diseases children's hospital in Krasnodar and a nurse on duty were sentenced to a year's stay in a penal colony and a subsequent ban on practicing medicine for two years. This preventive measure was applied for incorrect actions when inserting a catheter into a little girl admitted with a diagnosis of whooping cough, which caused thrombosis of the artery of the right forearm, which led to death due to the failure to perform an operation that could save the child’s life.
Often, patients who have received poor-quality medical care and suffered from the negligence of doctors do not even think that they can complain somewhere. This is how people who have lived their whole lives in our country are built; they humbly accept what they give. But human health is not something that should be neglected. You need to defend your interests even in such a difficult service sector as healthcare. If you are faced with a blatant case of medical negligence that has led or may lead to harm to health or, worst of all, death, be sure to contact the relevant authorities for help!
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Liability for medical malpractice
What happens to a healthcare worker who makes a medical error? It is immediately worth noting that the Civil and Criminal Codes do not have separate “medical articles”. As practice shows, in such cases cases are most often initiated under the following articles:
- Art. 124 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (failure to provide assistance to a patient);
- Article 118 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (causing grievous bodily harm through negligence);
- Art. 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (causing death by negligence).
