Medical liability in telemedicine: a proposal of principles for a telemedical leges artis

Abstract

This article analyzes the civil medical liability imputable to health professionals involved at remote healthcare. To this end, a set of principles is proposed from which health professionals and telemedicine providers are required to perform care duties. Based on the principles of analogy with and complementarity of face-to-face healthcare, three categories of special principles for remote healthcare are developed: enabling principles, operational principles, and patient protection principles. Under this scheme of principles, duties of care are specified, distinguishing those that respond to the risks caused by physical distance from those that arise from the organizational changes necessary for this type of healthcare. The application of these duties is analyzed in three telemedicine scenarios: virtual visit, virtual consult and eConsult. This structure of principles and duties in the provision of remote healthcare allows to delimit the scope of leges artis for each specific scenario and, at the same time, to develop regulatory strategies considering criteria of necessity, rationality and sufficiency, according to the specific contents that characterize each scenario of remote healthcare.