Washington Supreme Court ruling holds hospitals accountable for medical errors when care is delivered by independent contractors
SEPTEMBER 10, 2024 — A recent Washington Supreme Court ruling makes Washington one of the only states to prevent hospitals from avoiding responsibility for medical errors when they choose to staff their emergency rooms with physicians who are independent contractors rather than hiring them as employees, closing a significant loophole in the law and marking a significant step forward for accountability and patient safety, according to Luvera Law Firm.
“This decision changes longstanding law for the better,” said Luvera Law Firm attorney George Ahrend, who brought the case before the Washington Supreme Court. “The new precedent reflects the reality of how health care is actually delivered to patients, viewing the relationship from the perspective of the patient, rather than the hospital or provider. When a patient enters a hospital, it’s not their job to decipher which clinicians are employees or contractors. They expect the health care facility to be responsible for their care – period.”
The ruling, handed down on April 11, 2024, centered on a claim from the family of Cindy Essex, who was misdiagnosed by an emergency room doctor. Within 24 hours, that misdiagnosis led to Cindy’s tragic, preventable death from necrotizing fasciitis, also known as “flesh-eating disease,” an infection that results in the destruction of the body’s soft tissues.
The hospital, Samaritan Healthcare in Moses Lake, denied responsibility for her death, instead passing the blame along to the emergency room physician and radiologist, who were hired as independent contractors rather than employees of the hospital.
The Essex family brought a medical negligence and wrongful death claim against Samaritan and the physicians who treated Cindy, asserting that she died because they failed in their duty of care. The family also claimed that Samaritan was liable for corporate negligence regarding training and oversight of its staff and emergency department.
In June 2020, Grant County Superior Court ruled that Samaritan could not be held liable for the actions of a doctor on contract at the hospital, following legal standards in place since the 1970s. The Essex family appealed, using their experience to challenge the standard. The family’s lawyers, William Gilbert and Kristine Grelish, partnered with Luvera Law Firm and Ahrend, who brought the case before the Washington Supreme Court.
Ahrend argued that hospitals should be responsible for the treatment of patients who come to the emergency room because the ER is an inherent function of a hospital, and that proper staff training and standards of care fall well within hospitals’ nondelegable duty to patients.
Chief Justice Steven Gonzalez agreed, ruling in the Essex family’s favor. His opinion states: “A patient who goes to the emergency room, if conscious, is mostly concerned with getting care, not with untangling the contractual relationship between the hospital and the doctors who work there. And yet the characterization of the hospital-doctor relationship has profound implications for a patient’s ability to recover against the hospital for negligent treatment.”
The decision sets a new precedent for hospital liability cases in Washington state after decades of antiquated standards in medical malpractice law that allowed hospitals to deflect blame onto individual doctors, citing the technicality that they are independent contractors and not hospital employees.
Specifically, the decision requires hospitals to define and enforce standards of care across all specialty services.
“For the sake of patient safety, we hope this ruling will incentivize hospitals to use more care and discretion when partnering with independent physicians and physician groups, and may prompt them to raise their standards for physicians’ conduct and malpractice insurance coverage,” Ahrend said.
For the Essex family, the ruling allows them to move forward with their original legal claims against both the hospital and the treating physician.
Learn more about Luvera Law Firm’s work in medical malpractice here.
