Governmental immunity for EMTs

By Alex Stein

According to the recent New York Court of Appeals’ decision—Applewhite v. Accuhealth, Inc., 2013 WL 3185185 (N.Y. 2013)—governmental immunity is a starting point for any inquiry into EMTs’ liability for malpractice.

The Court based this immunity on the famous “duty to all is duty to none” principle: in providing a vital emergency service to public in general, EMTs function in a governmental capacity and owe no duty to any specific individual. The Court explained that EMTs differ from the regular providers of medical care—doctors and nurses, who are subject to stringent licensing requirements and must have extensive educational and training credentials—in that they provide only emergency medical stabilization in Basic (as opposed to Advanced) Life Support ambulances. EMTs are also funded and remunerated differently from doctors and nurses: they operate on a limited municipal budget that depends on the taxpayers’ money and cannot afford malpractice payouts. Dilution of the EMTs’ budget might limit the municipal emergency response systems to mere transport service—a consequence that society can ill-afford. Read More

Suing Psychiatrists: Causation, Spoliation, Alternative Liability, and Lost Chance

By Alex Stein

Almonte v. Kurl, 46 A.3d 1 (R.I. 2012), is a must-read malpractice decision. This decision is about a patient who was brought to a psychiatrist for involuntary committal evaluation after undergoing an acute episode.  The psychiatrist examined the patient, but opened no committal process. As a result, the patient was released to commit suicide, apparently with the same gun that he threatened to use in the episode that triggered the evaluation.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed the trial judge’s determination that the psychiatrist’s failure to open the committal process amounted to malpractice. The psychiatrist was nonetheless able to summarily defeat the wrongful death action filed by the patient’s family.

How could that happen? Read More

Decrease in the patient’s chances to survive held actionable as a standalone damage in Minnesota

By Alex Stein

On May 31, 2013, the Supreme Court of Minnesota has delivered an immensely important decision: it recognized as actionable a patient’s increased risk of dying resulting from her doctor’s negligent failure to secure timely diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Dickhoff v. Green, — N.W.2d —, 2013 WL 2363550 (Minn. 2013)

This case involved a family physician (the defendant) and her baby patient (the plaintiff). The baby had a lump on her buttock, which the defendant allegedly considered a non-issue for nearly a year. At the 1–year well-baby check, the defendant referred the baby to a specialist, who diagnosed her with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma (ARS)—a rare and aggressive childhood cancer. The baby subsequently underwent a tumor-removal surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but remained dangerously ill. Read More

Medical Malpractice, the Affordable Care Act and State Provider Shield Laws: More Myth than Necessity?

By Mary Ann Chirba and Alice A. Noble

Given the ambitions and reach of the Affordable Care Act, confusion about its intended and inadvertent impact is inevitable. Since its enactment in 2010, the ACA has raised legitimate and less grounded concerns among various stakeholders ranging from individuals and employers facing coverage mandates to States deciding whether and how to implement the Act’s Medicaid expansions. One item has received far less attention even though it weighs heavily on any provider engaged in the clinical practice of medicine: the ACA’s impact on medical malpractice liability. The Act does little to address medical malpractice head on. Nevertheless, physicians and other providers, the states and even some members of Congress have expressed concern that the Act will increase a provider’s exposure to medical malpractice liability.

In response, the American Medical Association has drafted model legislation to shield providers from newly created malpractice claims resulting from the ACA. It would prevent malpractice claimants from using federal or state practice guidelines, quality measures, reimbursement criteria and the like to establish or define the standard of care without expert testimony. In Congress, a version of this model, H.R. 1473, was introduced in the House of Representatives in 2012, and again in April of 2013 [link: https://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1473/cosponsors].

In April, the governor of Georgia signed H.B. 499 [link: https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/en-US/display/20132014/HB/499] into law, becoming the first state to pass legislation based on the AMA model act.

This came on the heels of a Medical Association of Georgia Advocacy Brief [link: https://www.mag.org/sites/default/files/downloads/issue-brief-provider-shield2-2013.pdf] stating that the ACA’s “guidelines” concerning health care quality measures; payment adjustments; hospital value-based purchasing; and value-based payment modifiers “will raise [the medical malpractice] standard to unreasonable levels by exposing physicians to a number of new liabilities….” [Emphasis added]

It is too early to tell whether states will follow Georgia’s lead and enact similar measures. What is clear is that such “standard of care protection” or “provider liability shield” legislation raises interesting questions about the ACA’s impact on state medical malpractice law.

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