Triage: Where Law and Medicine Part Ways?

In the contribution, triggered by the Covid-19 epidemic in Slovenia, the authors examine the lively relationship between law and medicine in the case of triage or emergency medicine. With only brief referral to key criminal and civil law challenges, which they leave aside for experts in their respective fields, they try to determine the boundaries of lawful conduct of physicians and other medical professionals by interpreting relevant provisions of Slovenian Health Services Act, Medical Practitioners Act, and Patients’ Rights Act. The authors focus on hard cases of triage, in which rejection or postponement of (parti- cular) medical care may lead not only to severe or irreversible interferences with the right to health, but also to the patient’s death. They do not specifical- ly address the provisions of the Healthcare and Health Insurance Act as they deem the sheer mention of the fact that any limitation of the right to medical services of a compulsorily insured person may represent a breach of rights and obligations stipulated within a social-insurance relationship as sufficient for this debate.

Keywords: triage, epidemic, right to health, right to life, human dignity.