Hospital indemnity offers insufficient protection

All private health establishments will need indemnity to cover patients for damages they may suffer as a result of a “wrongful act, according to the National Health Act 2003.

Most private hospital networks carry professional indemnity insurance, but the Act will make it mandatory. Hospitals without indemnity risk criminal sanctions.

Once a claim has been made by a patient, the establishment could defend those claims and determine what its liability is. The patient would have to prove that a “wrongful act” has been committed.

The indemnity would only be triggered where the wrongful act is by a member of the establishment’s staff or any of its employees. An establishment may, for example, employ agency nursing sisters who would be part of the staff as envisaged.

Staff or employees would not include the doctors attending to the patient at the hospital since they are not agents of employees but independent contractors.

Doctors must still ensure they have their own professional indemnity arrangements in place.