Medical Malpractice and Health Care Liability

LAW 472-01	Medical Malpractice and Health Care Liability	3 credits
As an academic treatment of one of the most pressing fields of modern litigation, the course will address fundamental issues surrounding medical negligence in the relationship of physician and patient. Within the core treatment of physician-patient responsibility, additional concepts will be addressed which define the totality of delivery of health care services, including commencement and termination of the professional relationship, allocation of liability among providers, and recently developed duties to third party non-patients. As necessary elements to the development of liability theorems, the course will cover elements of medical evidence, causation, harm and damages. Patient consent, provision of information, therapeutic experimentation and relevant ethical canons will also be treated as they have been grafted upon principles of medical responsibility. The course will also present concepts of institutional liability, respond eat superior, apparent and estoppel agency, peer review, corporate negligence and liability for managed care control and influence. The course will be presented through traditional case and statutory material, integrated with analysis of prevailing and proposed common law and statutory applications. Where appropriate, client oriented problems will be utilized to introduce legal practice reality into abstract issues of medical, legal and ethical principles.

*courses not offered every year