Court Opinion

ID: 9740524
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:36:48.999095+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:18.643544
License: Public Domain

ROBB, Judge,
concurring with separate opinion.
Although I concur with the majority, I write separately to emphasize that the result we have reached herein avoids what could, under other facts, be an inconsistent result. Here, we are concerned only with medical expenses owed to a hospital. Our legislature has chosen, via the Hospital Lien Act, to protect hospitals and ensure that they are compensated at least in part for them services. See slip op. at 5 (quoting Tankersley v. Parkview Hosp., Inc., 791 N.E.2d at 204). Providers not qualified as “hospitals” and not protected by the Hospital Lien Act are able to pursue the full amounts owed to them by the usual means. It would be incongruous, then, not to allow hospitals to pursue the remainder of the debt owed to them outside of the settlement. Any other result would actually result in less protection for the very entity the legislature has determined should be protected.5 The Hospital Lien Act only ensures that hospitals will receive some recompense. There is no indication the legislature intended the guaranty of some payment would be the quid pro quo for foregoing the balance. It does not limit a hospital’s ability to pursue full compensation. Subject to these comments, I concur with the majority.

. Our supreme court recently decided the case of Midtown Chiropractic v. Illinois Farmers Ins. Co., 847 N.E.2d 942 (Ind., 2006). In determining that Indiana common law prohibiting the assignment of personal injury claims also prohibits the assignment of the proceeds thereof, the court noted that if assignment of proceeds from a personal injury claim was allowed as distinguished from the personal injury claim itself, it "would operate to extend to [providers] unbridled collection rights far in excess of the statutory rights provided for hospitals....'' Op. at 947. Although not entirely germane to the issue before us in this case, I feel it is important to note the supreme court's acknowledgment in Midtown Chiropractic of the legislature's intention to benefit hospitals and its reluotance to extend greater rights to those not protected by the lien statute.