Responsabilità da attività sanitaria e legge 24/17 (Legge Gelli): verso una “pubblicizzazione” del rischio clinico?

Abstract

The issue of responsibility for health activities is increasingly serious and urgent, also because of the "countermeasures" that result in diagnostic and therapeutic practices now known in the category of defensive medicine.

The regulatory framework, after the law so called "Balduzzi" who proposed to tackle the problem, has recently 

found new legislation in the law so called "Gelli Bianco", to which this paper is intended, in which - moving from the illustration of the main areas of intervention of the reform - it is intended to frame the new provisions in a systematic context.

In particular, the effort of the legislative intervention, which sets itself the clear objective of achieving a reconciliation between the needs of protecting the patient and the guarantee of serenity and certainty of the health worker, is evaluated as a paradigm of a tendency towards accentuation support, if not replacement, of the responsibility of the healthcare facility compared to that of the individual doctor.

The orientation therefore appears to be aimed at forms of "collectivization" or "publicizing" of health risk, in a regulatory framework - and in jurisprudential interpretation - which is also evolving, and potentially a harbinger of further developments and in any case adjustments in the course of work, in this first phase of implementation of the reform.