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DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1640465
Cochlear Implantation in Social Courts
Objectives: Because the indication for receiving a CI has widened, more disputes arise between patients and their insurance companies concerning the costs for surgery and therapy. Our study gives an overview on court proceedings and decisions of the German Social Courts since 2003.
Methods:
Sources for the decisions of the courts were the commercial legal data bases „Juris“ and „Beck-online“ and the data base of the German Social Courts. Three verdicts were obtained by contacting the court directly, another one was found in an article. The decisions were issued between 2003 and 2017.
Results:
We found twelve decisions. Only one patient lost her case due to exceptional circumstances. The court proceedings took between 1;8 and 9;5 years.
Conclusions:
The recourse to the social courts – which is generally exempt from charges – can take a long time, but is worthwhile in most cases. Patients should be encouraged to take legal action. The medical doctors should sum up their results and recommendations thoroughly, so the courts have all the important information at hand at an early stage. By this the amount of time the court proceedings take can be reduced significantly in some cases.
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No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).
Publication History
Publication Date:
18 April 2018 (online)
© 2018. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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