醫療紛爭과 ADR

Abstract

The Medical disputes have increased continuously in Korea since all Koreans get the policy of public medical insurance in the 1980s. But the Korean legal resolution system including the medical litigation do not take confidence from any parties of the disputes. Especially the plaintiffs tend to think the distribution of the burden of proof in the medical litigation is still unfair. Many defendants including physicians complain that the present precedent of Korean Supreme Court relating to the medical litigation is not fair, so they insist that they should practice medicine defensively. It is suggested that one of the causes of the discontent of the all parties of the medical litigation be the lack of the judges’ knowledge about the medicine, so the alternative dispute resolution[ADR hereafter] should be introduced. Therefore the medical malpractice crisis and the ADR system of the United States are analysed in this paper. Many states of U.S. have the positive attitude toward the introduction of the ADR system in the medical malpractice litigation. But it should be noted that they have experienced twice the medical malpractice crisis, have tried the reform of the litigation system and they have the different judicial system. So the present writer takes the prudent attitude about the introduction of the ADR system for the medical dispute resolution. The causes of the discontent with the present medical litigation system should be analysed for sufficient time and try to reform the litigation system including the evidence rule of the medical litigation.