Doctors were exempted from criminal liability under Article 238 of the Russian Criminal Code

The State Duma has passed in the third reading the law "On Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation", which excludes the effect of the article of the Criminal Code on substandard performance of services on medical workers. The corresponding document was published in the system of legislative activity support on December 17.

According to its text, the action of Article 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation now does not apply to cases of medical care provided by medical workers. The article concerns the production, storage, transportation or sale of goods and products, performance of work or provision of services that do not meet safety requirements. In the State Duma proposed to stop calling the complex of actions of doctors to treat a patient a medical service.

"Today, medics can be held criminally liable under various articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. And the 238th is one of the most frequently used. Among the main reasons here is the attribution by law enforcers of medical care to services rendered within the framework of civil-law relations," Badma Bashankaev, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Health Protection, emphasized the importance of the amendment in a conversation with Izvestia.

According to him, the number of criminal cases initiated under Article 238 increases annually.

"Being a doctor is always a risk. Especially for specialists who are at the forefront of medicine: surgeons, anesthesiologists, obstetricians. They save lives every day, face the most difficult situations, provide emergency, planned, high-tech assistance. It is assistance, not services! And the new bill will allow doctors, as they call it, to breathe a little easier," Bashankaev added.

Earlier in March, the co-author of the bill, Senator Daria Lantratova, told Izvestia about the planned amendments. According to her, replacing the term "service" with "assistance" in medicine will allow to remove the actions of doctors from under the law on consumer protection and partially decriminalize their work, as they cannot be brought under the article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the substandard performance of services. Lantratova noted that such a step "will restore the main meaning of the medical profession - helping the patient, not service".