Die Kodifikation des Behandlungsvertragsrechts im BGB

At the beginning of 2013, the law on patients’ rights in Germany (“Patientenrechtegesetz”) came into effect, through which §§ 630 a–h were inserted into the German Civil Code. In this way, German legislators aimed to create transparency and place patients and medical professionals "on the same level". The author of this study critically examines whether the legislators have achieved these objectives: Have patients’ rights actually been significantly improved by the codification, or has the previous state of affairs merely been transposed into law? Is the law more transparent than before? The author makes numerous proposals for improvements to ensure the legislators’ objectives are achieved and shows that the law has not been implemented optimally so far.