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Management
Company That Provided Hospital With Administrative Services
Is Not Vicariously
A Massachusetts trial court has ruled that a management company that contracted to provide
administrative services to a municipal hospital is not vicariously liable for nursing care provided in the hospital's emergency room.
Plaintiff was taken by ambulance to a hospital emergency room after suffering angina and what she believed to be a heart attack. The registered nurse in charge of triage interviewed plaintiff at
12:35 a.m. Plaintiff received an electrocardiogram-the results of which were immediately available-but she did not see a doctor until 1:17 a.m. While giving her medical history to the doctor, plaintiff suffered a cardiac arrest and irreversible heart damage. Plaintiff flied suit against a management company
that managed the hospital pursuant to a contract for professional services, claiming that the company was vicariously liable for the nurse's negligence in failing to provide plaintiff with proper emergency room care. Neither the nurse nor the hospital was named as a defendant in the suit.
The management company unsuccessfully moved for summary judgment, arguing that, as a provider of administrative services, it could not be held liable for the independent medical judgment of a nurse employed by the hospital. A jury subsequently returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff, and the management company moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict.
The trial court granted the management company's motion for judgment n.o.v. In so doing, the trial court concluded that although there was sufficient evidence for the jury reasonably to conclude that the nurse had acted negligently in treating plaintiff, the management company was not subject to vicarious liability for the nurse's negligence. The nurse was not employed by the management company, but by the city that operated the hospital. Although the hospital was run with the help of five "borrowed" or leased management company employees, the court determined, the city had the right to control the performance of their management duties. This borrowed servant status placed vicarious liability on the city, rather than on the management company.
Regardless of the administrators' status as borrowed servants, the court found no evidence that reasonably permitted a finding that the management company could have directed or controlled the manner in which the nurse provided nursing care to patients in the emergency room. A Massachusetts statute required nurses to take responsibility for the quality of nursing care they
rendered. In addition, the court explained that the standard of care for a registered nurse required her to make independent medical judgments, and not to permit those judgments to be directed or controlled by anyone who was not a physician or nurse. Finally, the management company's contract with the city barred the administrators from directing and controlling the provision of nursing care, and, if they attempted to do so, the nurse had a legal and professional obligation to ignore their direction and exercise her own independent clinical judgment.
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