Opinion ID: 2104073
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Traditional Medical Malpractice

Text: Indiana passed its own medical malpractice act in 1975. The Indiana Medical Malpractice Act [2] was adopted by the General Assembly in an effort to maintain the availability of healthcare services in Indiana, that it believed was being eroded by tort suits, and to help control the costs of medical liability insurance, litigation, settlements, and excessive judgments against healthcare providers. Johnson v. St. Vincent Hospital, Inc. (1980), 273 Ind. 374, 379, 404 N.E.2d 585, 589-90. The statute established the framework for pursuing medical malpractice claims in Indiana. Specifically, it requires that, before a lawsuit is pursued, the Medical Review Panel determine whether the physician's behavior constituted malpractice and whether that malpractice caused the the plaintiff's injury. The conclusion of that board is not decisive. In this case, the board found that there had been malpractice but that it was not the cause of the Mrs. Sparkman's death. Mr. Sparkman is suing Dr. Mayhue for medical malpractice seeking compensation for his loss of consortium. Since this is not a wrongful death case, Mr. Sparkman's claim is purely derivative, i.e., he must prove all the elements of a tort against Mrs. Sparkman or he will not be entitled to recover. In a medical malpractice case those elements are: (1) that the physician owed a duty to the plaintiff; (2) that the physician breached that duty; and (3) that the breach proximately caused the plaintiff's injuries. Watson v. Medical Emergency Services (1989), Ind. App., 532 N.E.2d 1191, 1193, reh'g denied, trans. denied. Where a patient's illness or injury already results in a probability of dying greater than 50 percent, an obvious problem appears. No matter how negligent the doctor's performance, it can never be the proximate cause of the patient's death. Since the evidence establishes that it is more likely than not that the medical problem will kill the patient, the disease or injury would always be the cause-in-fact. The plaintiff must ordinarily prove that proper diagnosis and treatment would have prevented the patient's injury or death. In cases such as this one, it appears that a defendant would always be entitled to summary judgment. See Annotation, Medical Malpractice: Loss of Chance Causality, 54 A.L.R.4th 10 (1987).