Hospital Legal Affairs
Regular advisory services to companies (corporate legal affairs) refer to the provision of legal support for everything related to the management and operation of the company. They include day-to-day legal consultations, consultations on management and new business, checking of contracts and other documents, and holding training sessions for educational purposes.
However, unlike regular corporate legal affairs, medical corporations have not been provided with services that can be used promptly in actual clinical settings due to the high degree of specialization, the barriers of technical terminology, and the particularities of industry practices and regulations.
Problems involving patients in hospitals arise between patients and medical professionals, who would not ordinarily be in a confrontational relationship. However, due to regulations under the Medical Practitioners Act and other qualification laws that include obligations to comply with patients’ requests for medical treatment, as well as ethical sentiments, medical professionals are not easily able to interrupt treatment, even though they are now in a confrontational relationship with the patient. Under this structure, medical professionals can easily become caught between legal regulations and clinical ethics considerations and patient care. For this reason, advice must be given quickly so that conflicts can be avoided as much as possible. Such advice needs to be practical in terms of clinical practice.
Our firm practices “hospital legal affairs” to protect the rights of doctors and other healthcare professionals and to provide back-up for medical corporations and healthcare professionals, so they may provide medical services to their fullest potential. Our practice in this area is led by attorneys who possess medical licenses and who are also still working on the front line of clinical practice.
Specifically, in most cases, we provide initial responses to consultations from our clients on at least the same day, or even as early as a few minutes later, so that potential problems can be nipped in the bud. We also assist in the drafting of written agreements and documents in support of medical decisions.