Scarce Resources and the Civil Liability of Hospitals

The project ‘Scarce Resources and the Liability of Hospitals’ will be the first to examine, from a comparative law and multi-angled perspective, how resource limitations regarding in-patient care caused by scarce financial means due to the ever more advanced and expensive medicine, increasing life expectancy or unexpected external factors, such as a pandemic, have an impact on the obligations of hospitals with regard to organisation and treatment and, subsequently, affect the liability of hospitals vis-à-vis its patients.

The study includes a selection of seven European jurisdictions representative of the diversity of social insurance systems and liability principles applicable (Austria, the Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Norway) as well as five special reports (private insurance law, law and economics, ethics, intensive care medicine and hospital management).

The project is to be conducted by ETL in cooperation with Karl Stöger (Institute for Constitutional and Administrative Law, Department of Medical Law, Vienna University) and ECTIL, and is co-led by Ernst Karner (ETL, ECTIL and Vienna University) and Karl Stöger. The research results will be published by De Gruyter (Berlin/Boston).