What instead of no-fault?

A few days ago, during an interview at RMF FM, Minister Niedzielski said that there was a compromise regarding the no-fault system. He made the reservation, however, that it would not be in the shape "as imagined by many doctors, that is, going very far." It was certain - the Ministry of Health did not sign such a real no-fault system and proposed in the draft law on the quality of exempting from criminal liability those who would notify about the committed so-called medical error. The medical community negatively assessed Adam Niedzielski's proposal, but it turned out to be equally unacceptable to the Minister of Justice, who successfully blocked work on the project for many months.

Neither the opinions of experts nor the attempts to convince Zbigniew Ziobro by the Minister of Health, but also by the Patient Ombudsman, helped. Zbigniew Ziobro is resistant to the examples of how the no-fault system functions and the results it brings for increasing the level of patient safety in other countries (Adam Niedzielski assured some time ago that an analysis based on such data is an element of negotiations with Ziobro's ministry). However, everything indicates that the Ministry of Health gave way to Ziobro, who consistently expressed "firm opposition" to the exclusion of criminal liability for medical errors. According to Thursday's DGP, the draft law on quality is to include - instead of the current provision on the abolition of criminal liability - a provision on the possibility of extraordinary mitigation of punishment.

This is hardly a surprise - Niedzielski already at the end of April signaled that the quality act, in part related to the no-fault system - after consultation with other ministries, may turn out to be "imperfect". The Ministry of Health wants the quality act to be adopted in the fall, during one of the first Sejm sessions after the summer holidays - the concession to the minister of justice is to bring the plan closer.

Source: Dziennik Gazeta Prawna