Yankoviak v. Huder, No. 268368 ( Mich. Ct. App. Jan. 15, 2008)

In this medical malpractice action, the Court of Appeals of Michigan affirmed summary judgment for a hospital and held that there was no agency relationship between the hospital and a neurologist who allegedly violated the standard of care by failing to timely discover and treat a blood clot in an outpatient's sinus. The patient's wife claimed that, as a result, the patient suffered a stroke and brain damage. The court concluded that the neurologist's involvement with the hospital as a director of its stroke program and as an officer of its medical executive committee did not make him a direct agent of the hospital because the patient was not admitted to or treated by the hospital's stroke program and the neurologist's involvement with the medical executive committee had nothing to do with the outpatient treatment of the patient. Additionally, the court ruled that the neurologist was not acting as an agent of the hospital through the patient's family doctor (who made the referral to the neurologist) because the family doctor was not employed by the hospital during the relevant timeframe. Finally, a claim of direct negligence on the part of the hospital was determined to be without merit. The plaintiffs claimed that the hospital had a duty to review and supervise the patient's treatment because he had various tests done within the hospital. The court disagreed with this assertion and recognized that case law precedent and statutory authority provide that hospitals only owe a duty of ordinary care and must provide care and monitoring for patients only while they are admitted in the hospital. Here, the testing performed on the patient by the neurologist was done without admitting him to the hospital.