Quality in health care: a role for the law?

This paper considers the way in which English law can and does play a part in ensuring quality standards in healthcare practice. It examines the enhanced scope for judicial scrutiny of standards of care and the role played by law in the form of statutory regulation. There is an increasing degree of legal involvement in healthcare decision making. The law may provide some effective checks and balances to quality but, at the same time, the limits of the law as an effective regulator of quality have to be recognised because of the multifaceted nature of clinical judgment.