This compilation of articles, research studies and case material deals with the multi-faceted dimensions of hospital law. The volume brings together international experts' views on the interface between medicine, law and ethics as they relate to hospital policy and procedures. Topics explored include: ethics committees, informed consent, malpractice, medical experts and the courts, medical records, use of computers, DNR, death, organ transplants and bio-medical technology.

I Introduction.- Hospital Laws, Procedures, and Ethics in a Contrastive World.- Hospital Law - New Trends (A. Carmi).- II Responsibility.- Liability of Hospitals to Patients.- Medicolegal Aspects of Hospital Functioning.- Legal and Organizational Control of an Ambulatory Health and Social Service Centre.- Preventing Patient Falls: A New Perspective.- Legal Aspects of Unauthorized Medical Intervention by Paramedical Personnel.- Legal Problems Encountered by Emergency Medical Personnel in a Prehospital Setting.- Confidentiality of Substance Abuse Records and Mental Health Records in the United States of America.- Teaching Nursing Law in Nursing Schools.- III Technology and Law.- The Role of Technology in Hospitals.- Advanced Medical Technology and the Deinstitutionalized Handicapped.- The Computer as a Risk-Management Tool in the Hospital.- IV The Patient.- Responsibility for One's Own Illness.- Patient's Informed Consent in Austria.- Overview of American Law on Informed Consent: Physician's Duty to Disclose.- Israeli Law on Informed Consent.- Handling of Complaints in Health Systems in the USA, Canada, England, and Israel.- Evaluation Committees.- Preventive Incentives Through Graded Health Insurance Mechanisms.- Medical Records: Property of the Patient.- V Ethics.- Development of Institutional Ethics Committees in American Hospitals.- Legal Aspects of Biomedical Ethical Issues Confronting Hospitals.- Do Not Resuscitate (DNR): How to Decide, Who Should Decide, and Why?.- VI Miscellaneous.- Artificial Insemination - Legal and Social Aspects.- Critical Care Medicine and Organ Transplantation.- Cerebral Death: Human Life or Not?.- Extrarenal Transplants: The Ohio Experience.- Application of Unorthodox Treatment Methods to the Terminally I11 - The Ma'ayanAffair.- A Proposal for a Network of Psychiatric Treatment Services: A Unitization Model.- Medical Evidence in the Israeli Labor Courts: Court-Appointed Expert Medical Advisors.