In a report, the Court of Auditors concludes that Oniam’s amicable arrangement is no more advantageous for victims of medical accidents than legal proceedings.
Fifteen years after the creation of the National Office for Compensation for Medical Accidents (Oniam), the Court of Auditors pinpoints its “lax” management and its director is pushed towards the exit. To understand this ministerial decision, we must turn to the court’s latest report. The procedure of the public body created by the Kouchner law of 2002 on patients’ rights is judged there to be “unattractive” and the system “inefficient”.
The wise men of the rue Cambon point the finger in the first place at the increasingly long processing times for cases, the procedures showing an average duration of two years and nine months. In addition, they criticize the average amount of compensation per closed file which tends “ To stagnate since 2008, or even to decrease ”. It was 85,927 euros in 2015.
The amicable arrangement without advantage
Conclusion of these experts, the amicable arrangement “does not appear to be more advantageous today for the victim than the proceedings before the courts”. Wise men indicate, moreover, that ONIAM rejects 8.5% of favorable compensation opinions from regional commissions, and that it is therefore increasingly contested: “between 2011 and 2015, the rate of contestation of these decisions have indeed gone from 11% to 17%, ”writes the Court of Auditors.
Collection procedures from insurers, health professionals, hospitals, AP-HP or pharmaceutical laboratories are also severely judged. They are thus qualified as “late or non-existent”. Out of 49.5 million euros in compensation paid between 2011 and 2015 in substitution for insurers, “nearly 30 million did not give rise to a recovery process”, reports the Court of Auditors.
What about the victims of Depakine?
So many arguments to definitely break the trust between the two parties. “In the current state of its management, it would be adventurous to entrust it with the mission of compensating the victims of the Dépakine, the scale and the stakes of which would be even greater than in the Mediator case”, therefore considers the Court. accounts. However, the deputies have already entrusted this mission to Oniam in November 2016, which will be effective from June. This anti-epileptic drug was taken by nearly 14,000 pregnant women between 2007 and 2014 and is believed to be the cause of many malformations in their children.
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