AP Features, April 12th, 2007
Pneumonia patient Althea Lacoste walked into Methodist Hospital with her portable ventilator a day before Hurricane Katrina struck and died there before rescuers arrived at the flooded, powerless building in eastern New Orleans.
The question now before the Louisiana Supreme Court: Was the hospital's alleged lack of an adequate backup power system and evacuation plan an issue of medical malpractice?
If the answer is yes, the lawsuit brought by Lacoste's sons _ along with about 200 similar cases _ will take detour from the courts to a state review panel before it ever gets back to court to be scheduled for trial. The process could take more than a year.
In Louisiana, malpractice cases go first to the Louisiana Patients Compensation Fund Oversight Board. Then, attorneys for each case choose a panel of three medical professionals and an attorney to hear their claims. Each panel has a year to decide whether the claim it hears is strong enough to go further.
Attorneys can file lawsuits even if the panelists don't think there was any malpractice, but cannot do so before the panel has had its say.
In arguments before the high court Thursday, the hospital's attorney, David A. Bowling, said the case is malpractice because it comes down to allegations "that we did not do ... several things to keep the life support that we started her on from failing."
However, the oversight board does not consider such claims malpractice. "We urge the court to give a clear direction to the lower court and all the parties involved," said its attorney, David A. Woolridge Jr.
Lacoste's sons, Stephen and Neal, do not want the case detoured to the oversight board. Their lawyer, Laurence Best, compared the loss of power to a case in which an ambulance helicopter was unable to get off the ground. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that case was not malpractice.
Three hospitals owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. at the time of the flood have filed briefs supporting Methodist's contention that the case belongs before the oversight board.
Justices Jeanette Knoll and Catherine Kimball both asked whether they could even decide whether failure to have or to use an adequate evacuation plan amounts to malpractice without seeing the plan in question.
"Wouldn't it be almost critical for us to have the plan to know if it's treatment or not?" Knoll.
"I don't think so," Woolridge said. "What is alleged is failure to have a plan or implement one."
The high court received the case after the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that the claims amount to malpractice because they involve decisions that affected patient care.
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On the Net:
Louisiana Patients Compensation Fund: http://www.lapcf.louisiana.gov/index.htm
Louisiana Supreme Court: http://www.lasc.org/
