Tovar v. Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio, Ltd.

185 S.W.3d 65, 2005 Tex. App. LEXIS 9549
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedNovember 16, 2005
DocketNo. 04-05-00054-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 185 S.W.3d 65 (Tovar v. Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio, Ltd.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tovar v. Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio, Ltd., 185 S.W.3d 65, 2005 Tex. App. LEXIS 9549 (Tex. Ct. App. 2005).

Opinion

OPINION

Opinion by SANDEE BRYAN MARION, Justice.

This is an appeal from the trial court’s dismissal of appellants’ medical malpractice case against appellee on the grounds that appellants’ expert report did not satisfy the requirements of the Medical Liability and Insurance Improvement Act (“the Act”). In the underlying lawsuit, appellants sued three doctors and Southwest [67]*67Methodist Hospital, alleging, in part, that the hospital nurses’ negligence resulted in a delay in diagnosis that caused Guadalupe M. Rodriguez’s condition to deteriorate. Appellants contend the delay in diagnosis delayed the discovery of a cerebral hemorrhage. According to appellants, if the hemorrhage had been discovered and treated sooner, Ms. Rodriguez’s neurological deterioration and death could have been averted. We reverse and remand.

BACKGROUND

On June 7, 2001 at approximately 1:26 p.m., seventy-five-year-old Guadalupe M. Rodriguez arrived at the hospital. Although she was alert and oriented at the time, she complained of a headache and right-arm numbness. Ms. Rodriguez was evaluated and an order admitting her to the Neurological Care Unit was written at approximately 5:10 p.m. However, she was not admitted to the unit until approximately 8:00 p.m., allegedly because of a nursing shortage. Over the next several hours, Ms. Rodriguez was seen by doctors who evaluated her condition, and nurses who documented her condition. At 9:30 p.m., a call placed to Dr. Chandrahasan was returned by Dr. Osonma, who ordered medication to treat Ms. Rodriguez’s blood pressure and nausea. At 12:30 a.m. the next morning, the nursing personnel called Dr. Garrison and reported neurological changes and elevated blood pressure. Dr. Garrison ordered an emergency CT scan, which revealed a massive occipital parietal temporal hemorrhage. At 3:45 a.m., Ms. Rodriguez underwent surgery, following which she was kept on life-support until she was transferred to a hospice where she died on June 13, 2001.

After filing suit against the hospital and doctors, appellants filed the expert report of Dr. Kenneth C. Fischer. The hospital moved to dismiss appellants’ claims on the grounds that Dr. Fischer’s report did not adequately address the elements of standard of care, breach, and causation. After a hearing, the trial court granted the motion, and severed appellants’ claims against the hospital from their claims against the doctors. This appeal ensued.

ADEQUACY OF EXPERT REPORT

A trial court should look no further than the report itself, because all the information relevant to the inquiry is contained within the document’s four corners. Id. at 878. Although the report need not marshal all the plaintiffs proof, it must include the expert’s opinion on each of the three elements that the Act identifies: standard of care, breach, and causal relationship. Id. A report cannot merely state the expert’s conclusions about these elements. Id. at 879. Instead, “the expert must explain the basis of his statements to link his conclusions to the facts.” Bowie Mem’l Hosp. v. Wright, 79 S.W.3d 48, 52 (Tex.2002).

STANDARD OF CARE AND BREACH OF THE STANDARD

The standard of care for a hospital or other medical provider is what an ordinarily prudent hospital or other medical provider would do under the same or similar circumstances. See Palacios, 46 S.W.3d at 880; see also Strom v. Mem’l Hermann Hosp. Sys., 110 S.W.3d 216, 222 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2003, pet. denied). Identifying the standard of care is critical because whether a defendant breached his or her duty to a patient cannot be determined absent specific information about what the defendant should have done differently. Palacios, 46 S.W.3d at 880.

Dr. Fischer’s report stated the following with regard to the standard of care and the nurses’ alleged breach of the standard of care:

... [T]he nursing personnel provided poor documentation of the clinical status of Ms. Rodriguez between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Despite the patient’s obvious deterioration at that time, they meekly accepted inadequate responses of Dr. Garrison and Dr. Osonma with no further calls to physicians until 12:30 a.m. when the patient was in extremis. The appropriate standard of care for nursing personnel treating a patient with acute neurological process is to promptly and expeditiously transfer the patient to the appropriate setting and carefully inform the treating physicians of changes in the patient’s clinical status so that appropriate care can be rendered. The nursing personnel ... failed to perform these critical functions in their management of Ms. Rodriguez, thereby breaching the standard of care.

We conclude Dr. Fischer’s report sufficiently sets forth the standard of care because he specifically states what should have been done for a patient “with acute neurological process.” We also conclude Dr. Fischer’s report sufficiently sets forth how the standard of care was breached because he specifically states what the nurses should have, but did not, do.

CAUSATION

To constitute a good-faith effort to establish the causal-relationship element, the expert report must fulfill Palacios’s two-part test. See Wright, 79 S.W.3d at 52; Palacios, 46 S.W.3d at 879. It is not enough that the expert report “provided insight” about the plaintiffs claims. Wright, 79 S.W.3d at 52. Nor may liability in a medical malpractice suit be made to turn upon speculation or conjecture. See Hutchinson v. Montemayor, 144 S.W.3d 614, 618 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 2004, no pet.).

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

RGV Healthcare Associates, Inc. v. Estevis
294 S.W.3d 264 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2009)
Benavides v. Garcia
278 S.W.3d 794 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2009)
Bogar v. Esparza
257 S.W.3d 354 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2008)
University of Texas Medical Branch v. Railsback
259 S.W.3d 860 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2008)
HEB GROCERY CO., LLP v. Farenik
243 S.W.3d 171 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2007)
Wissa v. Voosen
243 S.W.3d 165 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2007)
Bidner v. Hill
231 S.W.3d 471 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2007)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
185 S.W.3d 65, 2005 Tex. App. LEXIS 9549, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tovar-v-methodist-healthcare-system-of-san-antonio-ltd-texapp-2005.