It is necessary to introduce measures to mitigate the risk of medical malpractice, "in order to contain the level of costs, to make them more predictable and, consequently, to create the conditions for also expanding the offer of insurance coverage". This was stated by the president of ANIA, Maria Bianca Farina, in a hearing in the Senate on the draft law "Provisions concerning the professional liability of healthcare personnel".
Farina underlined that the National Association of Insurance Companies agrees with the legislator's choice, but also noted that "the phenomenon of the increase in the number of complaints for medical malpractice has affected many developed countries in recent decades: therefore it is not a case limited to our country”. In any case, according to the number one of Ania "rigorous and structured risk management activities must be further implemented and made mandatory in order to minimize the risk of error with reference to the activity of the healthcare facilities and the individual professionals who work there".
As far as insurance coverage in this sector is concerned, “they can be divided into two distinct types – explains Farina – that relating to coverage” of individual doctors and “that relating to coverage for healthcare facilities. In the latter case, a significant reduction in the insurance offer can be observed. On the contrary, as regards the coverage of individual doctors, we do not know that there are generalized difficulties in finding coverage on the market either for employed doctors, called to answer for compensation for gross negligence in the event of recourse by the health facility, or for most of the freelance doctors, it being understood that for the latter, if they carry out particularly risky specializations, the costs of the coverage are decidedly high as they are technically proportional to the risk".
According to Ania, in fact, in this sector - perhaps more than in other non-life classes - once the claim is reported to the insurance companies, it can take many years before it is possible to ascertain the responsibility or otherwise of the doctor or the healthcare facility involved and before the damage is completely defined and stabilized and it is thus possible to arrive at a complete assessment of the damage from injury and, therefore, to its complete and definitive payment.
