Medical Negligence in India - A policy based analysis to meet quality and efficiency

Zaid Mohammad; Charles Marges Ntaiya

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.65086

Medical Negligence in India - A policy based analysis to meet quality and efficiency

Author(s)	Mr. Zaid Mohammad, Mr. Charles Marges Ntaiya
Country	India
Abstract	Medical negligence has emerged as a major policy concern in India, some consider it as a legal issue but if we go deep, we will find that it is central health policy challenge in the Indian context. A recent report estimates that India’s annual incidence rate of medical malpractices across various healthcares is around 5.2 million cases, with a sharp rise in both complaints and litigation over the last decade (Singh, 2024). This reflects a deeper structural weakness, gaps in regulatory framework implementation, weak accountability mechanism for patients’ safety and limited access to timely redressal of complaints. This paper will examine ethical issues in Indian healthcare, mainly focusing on medical negligence in India through a public policy perspective. It first outlines the legal and regulatory framework governing negligence, including consumer law, criminal provisions under the Indian Penal Code, professional regulation via medical councils, and health sector policies such as the National Health Policy, 2017 (Rao, 2009). Then analysis trends will be followed in litigation and reported cases, drawing on recent reviews of National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission (NCDRC) judgements and new empirical data from other medical journals (Sukumar, 2023). This will give us a clear highlight and recognizes key challenges existing in the current healthcare domain regarding fragmented redressal forums, procedural delays, inconclusive expert evidence, under-performing professional councils, and significant growth of defensive medicine (Shrivastava et al., 2023). In the last this paper proposes policies reforms, including specialized medical tribunals, stronger professional regulation, mandatory malpractices insurance, patient-safety oriented regulation, improved data systems and expanded public awareness program. These reforms aim to balance patient rights and provider protection, and to fix strong accountability mechanism for quality and universal healthcare coverage in India.
Keywords	Medical Negligence, Healthcare Regulation, Patient Safety, Consumer Protection Act, National Medical Commission, Legal Frameworks in Healthcare
Field	Sociology > Administration / Law / Management
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-12-31
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.65086

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Medical Negligence in India - A policy based analysis to meet quality and efficiency

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