Criminal shield for doctors splits government: 'protection' against too many lawsuits postponed again

The criminal shield for doctors continues to split the Government with the Ministries of Health and Justice that for over two years have been passing the dossier back and forth without finding an agreement on the hot topic of medical negligence despite the many announcements and the work of a ministerial commission of lawyers and doctors that after 600 days of work produced a reform document that remained in the drawers. A tug-of-war that has delayed for the umpteenth time the attempt to make the criminal shield for doctors structural and definitive, which provides for the punishability of white coats for death or injury only in the case of gross negligence. The measure was contained in the draft delegated decree for the reform of the health professions that landed at Palazzo Chigi and was the only one immediately operational among those envisaged in the mini-reorganisation (the others provide for delegated decrees).

Created during the pandemic years to protect doctors from criminal lawsuits in the face of the covid emergency, the shield, which was extended several times under pressure from Health Minister Orazio Schillaci, has never been well digested by Justice and Minister Carlo Nordio, who had strongly advocated the appointment of a commission of experts led by magistrate Adelchi d'Ippolito to review the entire legislation on medical negligence. However, the commission's proposals - rejected by the medical world - that were to become a reform to be presented to Parliament have never seen the light of day. And so, faced with the expiry at the end of the year of this 'protection' in the face of the many lawsuits against white-collar doctors - thousands of which are estimated every year and which in 97% of cases are resolved in an acquittal - it seemed almost natural that, as Schillaci had announced several times, it would soon be stabilised.

The criminal shield (civil compensation lawsuits are not affected) is in fact considered an initial 'incentive' to try to stem the flight of white-collar workers from hospitals, who are also frightened by the risk of ending up in court, and a tool to avoid excessive recourse to defensive medicine, which takes the form of an excess of prescriptions and therefore useless expenditure - an estimated 'cost' of 10 billion a year - precisely to avoid lawsuits by patients. Now yesterday there was a new setback on the text that had been in the works for weeks and that had seen two versions arrive at the council of ministers: in particular, the more stringent one, promoted by Justice, envisaged exclusion from punishability only if the healthcare activity was of 'special difficulty'. A seemingly technical detail, however, has caused the measure to be postponed again. "It is a postponement that tastes bitter as it often does lately. There is no more time to watch political waltzes: let's do it soon and well,' warns Pierino Di Silverio, secretary of the hospitalists of Anaao Assomed. The president of the Order of Physicians Filippo Anelli also speaks of a "blurred opportunity to make doctors more serene".