Report from the international online conference "Legal Liability for Allocation of Scarce Resources in Health Care in the Covid-19 Pandemic"
Abstract
On 15 April 2021, the international online conference "Legal Liability for Allocation of Scarce Resources in Health Care in the Covid-19 Pandemic" took place. Many health systems all around the world, rich and poor, have been facing similar challenges during the current pandemic.
Oftentimes, there have not been enough scarce health resources - health professionals, medical devices (such as ventilators), medicines etc. - to be provided to all the patients who need them. As a result, health professionals and hospitals have been forced to prioritise patients or, in other words, to perform what can be called patient triage (the term otherwise known mainly from war and disaster medicine).
The idea to organise such a conference arose from discussions among lawyers from several countries who found out that the approaches to allocation of scarce health resources as well as legal liability for unlawful conduct differ in each country. These differences are usually not striking at first sight, but they can greatly impact medical and legal practice.
For this reason, it is not easy to fully understand the differences and similarities among national regulation, of patient prioritisation in their complexity