- Summary
- Context of unmanaged liabilities
- Enforceable obligations
- Obligation to not negate ME/CFS legal status
- Obligation to procure ME/CFS medical education
- Obligation to not mislead or evade diagnosis and to provide sufficient detail (FND, MUS, PPS, ‘dysregulation model’ and Long Covid examples)
- Obligation to not abuse power and authority
- Obligation to recognise ME/CFS patient housebound or carer status
- Tests of lawfulness
- Risks – compliance and operational
- Unlawful clinical judgement (examples)
- Expertise risk and reputational risk – medical and legal
- Illusion of legal authority vs medical law enforcement
- Knowledge-gap risk and audit trails (examples plus research-market inefficiencies)
- Freedom of Information Act risks – flawed clinical judgement, discrimination and education refusal
- Third party risk from preceding unlawful clinical judgement
- Liability, malpractice and indemnification
- Irrelevance of official edicts and officialised redistribution of liabilities to frontline balance sheets (vaccination and NICE guideline examples)
- Compromised indemnification, insurance cover nullification and liability for lost income
- Evaluating duties of care and unmanaged risk exposures
- Risk mitigation
- References
- Version history
These compliance documents are live pre-released drafts that are specifically not structured for scientific audiences. Specific scientific referencing can be provided in consulting contexts, not limited to practice management, claims management, underwriting or litigation support for professionals or organisations.
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A journalistic summary of these documents for lay audiences will soon be published.
House bound status
Not accounting for the housebound or bed bound status of a patient when determining treatment or eligibility of a patient can add to or substantiate claims of liability, for resultant harm and financial loss, and/or for discrimination claims.
It is extremely common that practitioners / their practices fall foul of these obligations, generating unnecessary mutual consequences. Examples of common breaches of obligations can include refusal of home vaccination and disallowing patients access to cervical smear tests. Evidence is of primary care services allowing decades to pass without tests, due to disregard for housebound status (determined by discrimination and/or lack of education, which leads to a legally demonstrable knowledge gap.
Carer status
Not accounting for the de facto role of a carer when determining care, treatment or eligibility of a patient or their carer can add to or substantiate claims of liability (versus consequences from eligibility of carers in vaccinations schemes, for example). The structure of state support in the UK and other jurisdictions often means that carers are not officially identified in social security or social care terms. It must be noted that this insufficient poverty does not imply independence or a lack of carer in medically relevant terms.
Critically, any liability would not be versus the carer themselves (i.e. not associative discrimination or other such liability to the carer). Liability would be versus the patient, due to any consequences to the patient from ignoring the role of the patient’s carer on non-clinical and economic grounds (based on the medical irrelevance of benefits/social services’ economic thresholds).