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Legal Medicine in the Administration of Health Care

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Abstract

The medical administrator has diverse responsibilities, many of which are subject to or influenced by specific legal requirements. This chapter is divided into three components: Patient Care, Professionals, and Organisations and Systems. Under the heading of Patient Care, the author discusses adverse events, complaints and negligence. An overview of the law relating to complex ethical and legal issues affecting the care of individual patients including consent to medical treatment, advance care directives, substitute decision-making and withdrawal of treatment is also included in this section, together with an overview of the law relating to organ donation, wills and requirements for reporting to Coroners. In the section on Professionals, the author discusses requirements for registration and mandatory notification under the National Law, credentialing and defining the scope of clinical practice and professional indemnity insurance arrangements, and concludes with a discussion about the professional standards applying to medical administrators. In the section on Organisations and Systems, the author discusses a range of topics with broad application to organisations and the health care system as a whole, including the role of health care complaints bodies, whistle-blower legislation, workplace health and safety, workplace relations and national agreements that establish the roles and responsibilities of various parties in the Australian health care system.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Administrator and Health Lawyer, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Heather Wellington

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  1. Heather Wellington
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Group Chief Medical Officer, St Vincent’s Health Australia, Clinical Professor, Monash University, East Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Erwin Loh

  2. Founding Director, Centre for Health Leadership, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Paul W. Long

  3. Emeritus Professor, Warwick Medical School, Warwick University, Coventry, UK

    Peter Spurgeon

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Wellington, H. (2019). Legal Medicine in the Administration of Health Care. In: Loh, E., Long, P., Spurgeon, P. (eds) Textbook of Medical Administration and Leadership. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5454-9_6

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