Health Care Liability Act 2001 (NSW)

Health Care Liability Act 2001 No 42

An Act to make provision with respect to the recovery of damages for injury or death caused by medical practitioners and other health care providers; to make professional indemnity insurance compulsory for medical practitioners and to regulate the provision of that insurance; to protect medical practitioners, nurses and certain other health practitioners from liability when providing voluntary health care in an emergency; and for other purposes.

Part 1 Preliminary

1 Name of Act This Act is the Health Care Liability Act 2001.

2 Commencement (1) This Act commences on the date of assent, except as provided by subsection (2). (2) Part 3 commences on a day to be appointed by proclamation.

3 Objects of Act (1) The objects of this Act are as follows— (a) to facilitate access to fair and sustainable compensation for persons who sustain severe injuries from the provision of health care, (b) to keep the costs of medical indemnity premiums sustainable, in particular by limiting the amount of compensation payable for non-economic loss in cases of relatively minor injury, while preserving principles of full compensation for those with severe injuries involving ongoing impairment and disabilities, (c) to promote the reasonable distribution across the medical indemnity industry of the costs of compensation for persons who sustain severe injuries from the provision of health care, (d) to facilitate the effective contribution by medical indemnity providers to risk management and quality improvement activities in the health care sector, (e) to enable the medical profession and the community to be better informed as to the costs of compensation for, and developing trends in, personal injury claims arising from the provision of health care. (2) In the application and administration of this Act and the regulations, it must be recognised— (a) that medical indemnity providers have a role in keeping the cost of premiums within reasonable bounds by having in place appropriate standards in relation to risk management and claims handling procedures, and (b) that the law (both the enacted law and the common law) relating to the assessment of damages of the kind to which Part 2 applies should be interpreted and applied in a way that acknowledges the clear legislative intention to restrict the level of compensation for non-economic loss. (3) In the interpretation of a provision of this Act and the regulations, a construction that would promote the objects of this Act or the provision is to be preferred to a construction that would not promote those objects. This subsection does not limit the generality of section 33 of the Interpretation Act 1987.