Indian Doctors Arrested After Hepatitis Outbreak

In one of my February 25th postings, “Error-Prone Doctors, Count Your Blessings,” I brought up the relationship between medical malpractice and criminal prosecution that exists in The Netherlands, where a bill before parliament may result in prison sentences for up to 9 years for physicians who commit “serious” malpractice.

Perhaps you thought, “Interesting, but we’ll never hear about medical malpractice being treated as a crime in any other country.  That Netherlands story was a once-in-a-blue-moon fluke.”

And you would have been wrong, because in India, doctors who were allegedly responsible for an outbreak of hepatitis that resulted in numerous deaths have been arrested.  They are looking at anywhere from 2 years to life in prison, if convicted.

So Docs, quit your belly-aching about those increased med mal liability insurance premiums.  You really don’t know how good you’ve got it.