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1 Eur. J. Health L. 5 (1994)
The Rights of Patients in Europe

handle is hein.journals/eurjhlb1 and id is 15 raw text is: European Journal of Health Law 1: 5-13, 1994. 5 @ 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. The rights of patients in Europe H.J.J. LEENEN University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Health Law Health law as a special branch of law is developing in many countries of Europe. This development is reflected in medical and law practice. The development of health law is due to many factors. One is the evolution of medical science and technology, which more and more intrude upon the human body and mind and affect physical and mental integrity. Patients want to be secure that their rights are protected, the more so because they are dependent of the health system. Moreover, there is a growing sense of human rights in society, which is also reflected in health care. Human rights are at the basis of patients' rights. In health care, patients' rights are liable to violation. Not because health care providers are more inclined than others to do so, but because the individual in health care is easily reduced to a case and the patients' position is weak because of the illness and the insecurity and fear it produces. In such a situation the individual has to be protected. This has always been the role of law. Another factor is that health care, which for long has been mainly a matter of the physicians, has more and more come under the responsibility of society, not only because of the costs of health, which increasingly place a burden upon national resources, but also because it wants patients' rights and equity to be secured. Scarcity of facilities brings their equitable distribution under discussion. Here social justice and the right to health care are at stake. The problem of the right to health care, its limits and equity in implementing it, has not been solved. The discussion not only regards the macro-level, but also health care delivery at the micro-level where selection of patients and waiting lists have become normal phenomena. Involvement of the law in health care is also caused by the bureaucratization of medicine. Medicine has become a large-scale and bureaucratic institution in which personal relations tend to deteriorate. But also individual rights are likely to be affected in such institutions. Defending the patient in the complex health care system has become a task for health law. The combination of the deep intruding, sophisticated and bureaucratic health care system on one hand and the dependent patient who often feels lost and regarded as an object, on the other, has caused what I like to call a

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