의료분쟁조정제도 운영상의 문제점 및 개선방안

Problems in the Medical Dispute Medication System and Improvement Plan

For a variety of reasons, the number of medical disputes is continuously rising. Due to the intrinsic qualities of medical treatments, one would find it more apt to subject medical disputes to general conflict resolution procedures rather than to once-for-all decisions under legal suits. To address the increasing medical disputes with greater professionalism and efficiency, the Medical Disputes Mediation Act was enacted and a medical dispute mediation system put in place, while drawbacks have been blamed to both. The current mediation procedures require the respondent's agreement as a disclosure requirement. A reasonable improvement to this would be to amend the regulation of agreement supposition, or to enforce procedural participation only to public health facilities managed by the national or regional government. Furthermore, small claims cases of 20 million KRW or less in claim may be considered for conciliation-prepositive principle. The concentration on small claim medical disputes is a phenomenon that can be addressed by carrying out maximum authentication commissions or similar measures, one of the solutions by enhancing the public trust in the Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Agency. The proper management of medical authentication teams is one way to address the existing problems in the authentication system. For this, the number of team members shall be increased under more flexible authentication procedures. All indemnity resources for medical accidents of force majeure must be borne by the Government, for it is the body principally responsible for social compensation. Placing this cost on the establisher of the subject medical facility holds the possibility of violating fundamental rights. While the costs for subrogation payment system for damages may be borne by the healthcare facility establisher, a deposit-based system must be created for cases in which the facility shuts down, without holding the responsibility for accident cause. Such change to a deposit-based system will evade the controversies of unconstitutionality, etc.