According to data from ACOI, the Association of Italian Hospital Surgeons: there are about 300 thousand medical malpractice lawsuits currently pending, 35 thousand claims per year. Most concern surgical activity (38.4 percent), omitted or incorrect diagnoses (20.7 percent), therapeutic errors (10.8 percent), and nosocomial infections (6.7 percent). And so defensive medicine, that is, the request for visits or examinations or drugs that are unnecessary from a clinical point of view but useful in the case of legal litigation, increases. For the state coffers, this is no small problem. It has been estimated that the economic burden of this phenomenon is around 10 billion euros a year. Every doctor tries to protect himself from the risk of making mistakes. So, since not all healthcare companies have insurance coverage, they make out of their own pockets: the annual expense ranges from 10 thousand to 15 thousand euros. An arm and a leg for young doctors, who get about 2700 euros net per month; worse for residents (1800 euros per month). Not to mention that many health professionals are unable to obtain adequate insurance coverage on the market because of the excessively high cost of policies. Now a law is coming to relieve physicians of criminal liability in all those cases of death or injury other than gross negligence.
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