Since the end of 2024, all healthcare institutions in Estonia have been required to notify the Health Board of any situations that have caused a risk to their patients' health, whether that be administering the wrong medication or a surgeon's glove breaking during an operation.

In just over a year since the law came into force, 6,900 cases have been reported.

"If we look at whether there could be more or less of these cases, and if we look at who has reported them, we can see that a lot of institutions have not reported them. This means the number of cases is even higher than we are currently aware of today," said Külli Friedemann, head of the Health Services Department at the Health Board.

According to Friedemann, there are nearly 1,600 healthcare institutions in Estonia, with only a few hundred having reported the occurrence of such incidents. Although there are a large number of small healthcare providers in Estonia, the Health Board considers the low number of reports it receives to be cause for concern.

"We do not yet have a culture in Estonian healthcare whereby we dare to talk about mistakes and report them. All institutions that say, 'it doesn't happen here,' but it happens to everyone every day," said Friedemann.

Every other case registered involved either medical malpractice or other types of harm caused to a patient's health. For example, it is not considered medical malpractice if a patient happens to fall in a hospital and break their arm due to a slippery floor. However, according to Friedemann, a person has the right to claim compensation if the situation that caused harm to their health could have been avoided.

"The damage has to be measurable, and it must have actually happened. For example, you had to stay in the hospital longer (than necessary), or you had to take sick leave," Friedemann said.

However, compensation cannot be obtained if the damage caused to a person's health has only been short-term, for example, if being given the wrong medication in hospital led to short-term nausea. PZU Insurance, which deals with cases of medical malpractice, received just over 400 claims in the first 13 months.

"We have already compensated 18 percent of those cases, meaning they have been recognized as (valid) cases. Twenty-eight percent are still being processed and are being dealt with. The rest have been rejected, including cases where the violation occurred before the law came into force," said Argo Argel, product manager for liability insurance at PZU Insurance.

A negative decision is also made if the value of damage incurred is less than €200, which is the limit set by law. The largest amount of compensation that can be awarded is €100,000. In over 20 cases, the damage caused has been deemed to exceed €14,000.

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