Paciento teisių ir pareigų teisinio reglamentavimo Lietuvoje problematika ir raidos tendencijos.

Abstract

This article reviews the development of legal regulation of patients’ rights and duties since the reestablishrnent of independence of Lithuania. It analyzes the patient’ s rights and duties in health care, health laws on the patients’ rights and duties, compares them with other legal institutes, evaluates concepts and court practice on this issue. Special attention is paid to the development of regulation of the patients’ rights and duties. It is obvious that legal regulation is not perfect because the need to revise the Law on the Rights of Patients and Compensation of the Damage to their Health became apparent as early as 18 months after its adoption. The Law on the Rights of Patients and Compensation of the Damage to their Health only identified the rights of a patient. In case the health care services are provided under a contract, the primary source of the patients’ duties is Article 6.731 of the Civil Code. The patients’ duty is to cooperate with the treatment-provider. The draft Law on the Rights of Patients and Compensation of Damage to their Health envisages general and special patient’s duties. The identification of patients’ duties receiving health care services is necessary for the purpose of ensuring equality of both sides. The article analyzes the shortcommings of the regulation of a patient’s right to complain and evaluates the legitimacy of the standard patient informed consent form. The systemic analysis of the Lithuanian healthcare legal regulation discloses that a patient’s right to accessible health care is declining. This is in contrast to the tendencies of legislative regulation of the Scandinavian states. The draft of Law on the Rights of Patients and Compensation of the Damage to their Health envisages a patient’ s duty to provide the health care specialists with information. The article evaluates this duty and recommends to define by law the social and culturai values which a patient is expected to share with a doctor. Such regulation would set the right to col1ect information about the facts of a patient’s private life that are necessary to make a correct diagnosis, select the appropriate treatment or nursing.