The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau will make malpractice insurance compulsory for all the capital's public medical organizations. Coverage will extend to doctors and other professionals against liability arising from patient care, reports the Beijing News.

Since 1998, the city has encouraged its medical organizations to carry such insurance, but few have complied. An official from the health bureau was quoted as saying that most organizations said that high premium costs kept them from buying insurance.

According to a report released by the Beijing Insurance Regulatory Committee in June, fewer than 20 city hospitals have taken out medical malpractice insurance. Only two insurance companies, PICC Property and Casualty and the Beijing Branch of Taiping Life Insurance, offer such policies.

But frequent medical malpractice allegations and doctor-patient disputes have become a severe headache for the medical organizations.

Under the new directive, all state-owned not-for-profit public medical institutions are required to have malpractice insurance. An independent third-party organization made up of medical, legal and insurance professionals will assess any liability claims and mediate disputes.

The health bureau official said that all district- and county-level health bureaus should organize the medical facilities within their areas to obtain insurance.

The same regulations address issues of malpractice insurance for privately operated medical institutions.

Since the medical institutions themselves shoulder the cost of insurance, it will not increase the financial burden on patients, the bureau emphasized.

It is not clear whether funding to the organizations is to be increased to cover the additional costs.

Some doctors are backing the changes.

"Without insurance, a lot of doctors face great psychological and economic pressure when a medical accident happens," Chen Wei, director of the Doctor-Patient Relations Department of Jishuitan Hospital, was quoted by the Beijing News as saying.

That trepidation can have an impact on the care they give patients.

"At present, a few doctors use conservative measures in their treatment rather than some new ways that may be more effective," he said.

(China Daily November 5, 2004)