Legal Protection of Patients in Telemedicine Services: Implementation and Challenges

Abstract

The increasingly widespread Covid-19 pandemic has an impact on the disruption of health services in hospitals, including patients who intend to consult or treat other diseases as most of the hospitals are used to treat Covid-19 patients. This situation encourages a group of health service providers to use telemedicine as an alternative for the community to continue receiving health services from medical personnel without having to go to the hospital. This study focuses more on the information services and medical consultations offered by service providers, hence it is necessary to know how the legal protection of patients in telemedicine services is being implemented and their challenges. This paper is a prescriptive normative research using secondary data in the form of regulations and policies as well as interviews with several sources in related fields. Regulations and policies by the government are still temporary (fluctuating) and have not comprehensively regulated transactions for telemedicine services, for example, when an incident occurs that results in patient loss, a strong legal basis is needed to restore patient rights so that in the end a legal certainty is created for the society. Keywords: legal protection, patients, telemedicine