A regime separating the practitioner's fault, which is insured, from non-negligent accident, compensated by national solidarity rather than by insurance.
French medical liability law rests on a distinction many other systems do not make. The practitioner and the institution in principle answer only for their fault, proved by the claimant, and their liability insurance is compulsory. But serious harm can occur without anyone's fault, the procedure having conformed to accepted medical knowledge, and the law created for that case a compensation scheme funded by national solidarity, subject to a severity threshold and administered by a public office. The split has two virtues and one difficulty. It avoids labeling as fault what is not, merely to allow compensation, a drift observed in systems that know only liability, and it moves outside insurance a share of losses that would be uninsurable. The difficulty is that the boundary between fault and hazard is drawn case by case through expert assessment, so the same file may fall on either side depending on how a failure to inform or a loss of chance is appraised.
Law no. 2002-303 of 4 March 2002 on patients' rights established compensation for non-negligent medical accidents through national solidarity, above a severity threshold, and entrusted the task to a national office created for that purpose.
responsabilité médicale, aléa thérapeutique, medical malpractice, accident médical non fautif