Introducing No-Fault Compensation in Slovenian Medical Tort Law

Abstract

The National Strategy for Quality and Safety in Healthcare 2022–2031, drafted in November 2021 from the Slovenian Ministry of Health, sets out, i.a., the basic foundations of a no-fault compensation model for medical errors. No-fault compensation is a new concept in Slovenian (medical) tort law. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to determine whether a no-fault compensation regime, as set out in the Strategy, is at all necessary and reasonable in the light of the existing tort law regime and, in particular, whether such a regime would actually improve the patient’s position in tort legal relationships due to medical errors and facilitate their options. By our findings, the Strategy does not provide a sufficiently compelling rationale for intervening in the existing compensation legal regime. The Slovenian case law has already established measures to compensate for the disturbed parity between the legal positions of the patient and the healthcare organization in the assessment of medical errors.

Keywords

• no-fault compensation
• medical error
• tort law
• healthcare
• safety