Study On Tort Liability Of Nursing Homes

Dueto growing number of seniors in society and shrinkage in resources for family careof them,institutional senior care services,an important component of social senior care,is expected to play an increasingly important role.More and more families and elder people regard institutional senior care as a decent choice for well-being in the later years.Because of the particular nature of the elderly interms of physiology as well as psychology,the proportion of infringements in nursing home is higher than those in other organizations,making nursing home tort a top risk inmaintaining nursing home.There are plenty of cases in which seniors' rights have been infringed but they cannot save themselves from infringement.Protection of seniors' rights has become a crucial issue that needs to be solved urgently.However in China,there is not yet a specializedlaw or regulation that mediates between nursing home and seniors who settle in them.Owing to the grim situation of aging of populations and the demand for professionalizedsenior care,China's old-age care institutions have appeared to experience rapid development with fast growing number and size of facilities,together withthe number of settled seniors.However,compared with the special provisions of the Tort Liability Act on the responsibilities of medical facilities,educational institutions,etc.,current laws have not made any type-standardization on those of nursing home.On the other hand,it is worth mentioning that laws and national standards such as the newly enacted "Food Safety Law" and "Code for Fire Protection in Architectural Design" have clearly listednursing home as a special category of public service facilities.With further development of service industry,it can be anticipated that basic civil laws such as the Tort Liability Law are bound to make special provisions for nursing home as well.During the process of senior care,there are cases in which a senior falls or gets injured.Due to the imperfection of current legislative system,this is likely to make the pension institutions be facedwith a rather passive situation once caught in lawsuits.Besides,in consideration ofthe reported cases of ill-treatment on seniors by nursing home,it is also very important to formulate laws that specifically address the protection of the rights of the senior.It can be seen from the 38th and 39th article of Chapter 4 of the“Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly"amended in 2015 that,the state forces nursing home to be included in planning urban and rural communities and suggests people' s governments at all levels raise the funding in senior care services according to local economic development level and demand for the services.Hence it is not hard to see that the state attaches great importance to nursing home in aspects of funding,development planning and supporting facilities construction,and at the same time affirms the important role played by nursing homein the future.A clear responsibility identification for the senior during their stay and other issues,and establishment of a complete set of mechanisms not only enables nursing home to avoid risks,but also let seniors receiver better relief when suffering from violations in their rights.The thesis consists ofsix sections including "Introduction","Introduction to the tort of nursing homes","The Particularity of Infringement in Nursing Homes","Imputation Principle of nursing homes tort","Contents of Responsibility for tort liability in Nursing Homes","The tort liability for Nursing Homes".The thesis identifies the particular nature of tort liability of nursing home,the specific content and the concurrence of liability for breach of contract and tort liability that relieves the operational risks of nursing home through improvement of old-age liability insurance and enables the construction of senior care service system to play an important role in achieving the social goal of“the elderly are properly cared for".The thesisdedicates to the protection of rights and interests of the elderly by researching and analyzing the status of infringement ofnursing home as well as making suggestions on ameliorating them.