LIABILITIES
The list below summarizes some of the major grounds of potential legal claims with which clinicians, institutions, and associations should be concerned.
•1. Misdiagnoses. Misdiagnosis refers to both a failure to diagnose a condition as well as inaccurate diagnosis.
•2. Delayed diagnosis or failure to timely diagnose. COMMON IN CANCER CASES.
•3. Delay of medically necessary, effective conventional treatment (e.g. loss of chance) Example. Exponential growth of cancer. FAMILY AND SPOUSE RISKS.
•4. Inadequate informed consent. ISSUE FOR CAM.
•5 . Insufficient evidence of safety and/or efficacy for CAM therapy.
•6. Vicarious liability for acts of agents.
•7. Negligent referral to CAM practitioners.
8. Adverse herb-drug or conventional-CAM treatment interaction.
•9. Breach of confidentiality and/or privacy.
•10. False and misleading or deceptive claims.
•11. Violation of informed consent. Understanding informed consent is a critical part of the therapeutic encounter..
•12. Patient abandonment, fiduciary relationship.
•13. Complicity to parental reckless neglect of child patient.
TENTATIVE CONCLUSION
"The popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is considerable: the one year prevalence of CAM usage is 42 percent in the United States” (Eisenberg David et al, Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States. JAMA 1998:280:1569-75)
With the growing popularity of holistic and integrative medicine, medical tort law is more and more applicable to holistic health practitioners. They therefore need to integrate within their practice the rules on how to practice holistic medicine without liability, on how to inform patients about legal protection strategies, including, but not limited on what is required substance wise.
Conventional doctors also need to be better informed about medical legal rules regarding holistic and innovative medicine, from emerging standards to how to refer patients to holistic providers (as this is often a strong demand among holistic sensitive patients) and other key fields.
As more evidence accumulates regarding the safety, the efficiency and the limits of holistic medicine, all physicians and health care professionals need to better be informed about the the parameters of liability, on how to best protect themselves from malpractice suits, archaic laws and obsolete judicial precedents and on how to contribute in promoting a genuine public health culture in the U.S.