Law on Lawyers · 28.11.2024

Medical Negligence Lawyers in Vietnam: What a Patient Must Prove

Who this page is for. You live, work or travel in Vietnam — or you came home for treatment as an overseas Vietnamese — and something went wrong at a hospital or clinic here. You want to know whether you can claim, from whom, and how long it takes. This page answers that. Vietname…

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By Lawyer Nguyen Nhu Hai – UniLaw LLC

Who this page is for. You live, work or travel in Vietnam — or you came home for treatment as an overseas Vietnamese — and something went wrong at a hospital or clinic here. You want to know whether you can claim, from whom, and how long it takes. This page answers that.

Vietnamese law treats a medical incident as an ordinary civil claim for damages. There is no special malpractice court and no jury. The route runs through the Civil Code, the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment, and the liability policy behind the facility. Medical negligence lawyers in Vietnam read that policy early, because it usually decides the number.

UniLaw handles these as damages and insurance matters, from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang. We work in English.

A case medical negligence lawyers in Vietnam would open with

Judgment No. 302/2023/DS-PT of 21 November 2023 — Superior People’s Court in Da Nang, compensation outside contract.

A British visitor suffered an injury on 12 October 2018 at a resort on Ba Na mountain, Da Nang. She took treatment first in Vietnam, then rehabilitation in the United Kingdom. She then sued the operator for failing to warn about the weather and to keep visitors safe.

The court accepted that the accident happened and that the treatment was real. It still dismissed the claim in full under Articles 584 and 585 of the Civil Code. The evidence never established that the operator’s fault caused the accident.

Her strongest document failed too. A staff member had signed an English note accepting blame. A bailiff’s record showed that this employee did not read English and had signed under persistent pressure. The operator had separately offered GBP 10,000, about VND 320,000,000, as support.

This was a resort case, not a hospital case. It is still the clearest recent statement of what a foreign claimant must prove here. A real injury and a real course of treatment are not a claim. An apology signed by a junior employee is worth nothing. We publish the full reasoning on case.unilaw.vn.

The professional council decides before the court does

None of this starts in court. Under Article 101 of the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment, Law No. 15/2023/QH15, the facility must convene a professional council to decide whether the practitioner committed a professional or technical error. The council sits at three levels. Where the Ministry of Health convenes it, its conclusion is final.

Article 100 defines the error. Its second clause also lists four situations where there is no error at all, and claims die on that clause more often than on anything else. The main one is an unforeseeable reaction in the patient’s own body despite correct practice.

Therefore the first question is never how much. It is what the council concluded, and on what record.

What medical negligence lawyers in Vietnam must prove

Article 584 sets the basis of liability and Article 585 the principles. You prove the act, the loss, and the link between them. Fault and causation are separate things, as judgment 302/2023 shows.

Once the council finds an error, Article 102 places the duty to compensate on the facility, not on the individual doctor. You sue the hospital or the clinic company. That is deliberate: the facility is solvent and insured, the practitioner often is not.

Article 103 then requires professional liability insurance in medical examination and treatment. The cover extends to the compensation and to the legal costs of the incident. In substance most of these files become insurance files, which is why they sit with our Vietnam insurance lawyers.

What a Vietnamese court can award

The measure comes from the Civil Code, Law No. 91/2015/QH13, and not from any tariff. In short, the court adds up four things.

Reasonable costs of treatment, care and rehabilitation under Article 590.
The income you actually lost. Where your income varies, the court takes the average for comparable workers.
The costs and lost income of whoever cared for you during treatment.
A sum for mental suffering. The parties may agree it; otherwise the law caps it at fifty times the State base salary.

Where the patient died, Article 591 adds reasonable funeral costs and support for those the deceased had a duty to maintain. If the parties do not agree the sum for the family’s suffering, the law caps that at one hundred times the base salary. Running through both, Article 585 requires full and prompt compensation of actual damage — but only actual damage, and only where the file evidences it.

Two points surprise foreign clients. First, Vietnam awards no punitive damages at all. Second, you recover treatment abroad only where the file shows it was reasonable, so keep every invoice and referral.

How long you have, and how long it takes

The deadline is short and people miss it. Article 588 of the Civil Code gives you three years to sue for damages, counted from the day you knew or should have known that your rights were infringed. Waiting for the council, then for the facility to answer, then for a family decision, eats that period quickly.

On timing, expect the council stage to run in weeks, negotiation with the insurer in months, and a contested first-instance hearing in about a year from filing. An appeal adds six to twelve months. Most files that settle do so once the insurer accepts the council conclusion, which is the moment worth preparing for.

Foreign patients and the law that applies

Where the parties have not agreed otherwise, Article 687 of the Civil Code applies the law of the country where the consequence of the harmful act arose. Treatment given in Vietnam that caused harm in Vietnam is a Vietnamese law case, whatever your nationality and wherever you later recovered.

Practically, that means five things belong in your file from day one: the full clinical record obtained from the facility in writing, the consent forms you signed, the professional council’s conclusion, every payment receipt, and your own health or travel policy. Ask for the record early. It gets harder to obtain once a dispute is open.

Working with medical negligence lawyers in Vietnam

Before any of that, check your own cover. A health insurance or medical insurance policy often pays the treatment bill first, which changes what you still need to recover from the facility.

We assess the council conclusion first, then the policy, then the quantum. Where the file is weak on causation we say so at the start rather than after a year of costs. Where it is strong, the insurer usually becomes the real counterparty and the matter settles without a hearing.

UniLaw also acts on the other side of these disputes, for hospitals and their insurers, and our page on medical malpractice defence in Vietnam sets that out. However, we take instructions from one side only in any given matter.

Related claims — road accidents, workplace and public liability — sit in our personal injury law section. Offices in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang, working in English and Vietnamese.

For the other claims and disputes we handle for individuals, see legal services for individuals in Vietnam.