Dr Christine Tomkins, Chief Executive, The Medical Defence Union.
We have made the case to the Department of Health that, in the public interest, insurance should be mandatory for doctors and dentists, and discretionary indemnity should no longer be acceptable.
The MDU does not believe that discretionary indemnity provides acceptable safeguards for practitioners and patients in today’s medico-legal climate. We continue to believe it is in the public interest that all healthcare professionals are insured.
We believe it is in the public interest that all healthcare professionals are insured. We have been using our best efforts to highlight the problems with discretionary indemnity for well over 10 years and find it hard to believe it is still allowed in the UK. In Australia, for example, it was outlawed in 2003.
The MDU believes that doctors, dentists and patients should have the reassurance of a contractual guaranteed of indemnity for clinical negligence claims.
More ArticlesShare this post:
- - -