There is a federal law that certain health care clinics that receive federal funding (usually because they provide care to low-income people, farm workers, etc.) can choose to have their health care providers considered as federal employees for purposes of medical malpractice claims. If something goes wrong, how do you sue a federally funded clinic?
In Washington, such clinics include Sea-Mar, Community Health Centers, and the Yakima Valley Farm Workers’ Clinic. When a malpractice claim arises from care provided at such clinics, the procedural law is very different than a claim arising under state law. A major difference is that there is a two-year statute of limitations, rather the three years under state law.
Another major difference is that the claim must first be submitted under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) as an administrative claim, and a lawsuit can’t be filed until the claim is either denied or six months have elapsed. The claims must be submitted to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services in Washington, D.C.
From an attorney’s perspective, another major difference is that a lawsuit under the FTCA is heard by a federal judge, acting without a jury. Federal procedural law is often quite different – and more strictly enforced — than are state court procedures, so an attorney has to be acutely aware of such procedural technicalities. However, presenting a case to a judge (a “bench trial”) can be much easier than presenting a case to a jury, so it can have advantages for a plaintiff’s attorney. The judge is a more sophisticated “trier of fact” than a jury, so trial techniques may be quite different.
A major wrinkle may occur, however, when a case has to include providers from both the federally-funded clinic and a non-federal hospital. This can occur often in birth injury cases, where the prenatal care is provided at the clinic, but the actual birth may be handled by both clinic providers and those employed by the hospital (or by another entity). In that situation, it may be necessary to have the case decided by both a federal judge and a jury, since the non-federal provider has the right to a jury trial and the federally-funded provider does not.
In that case, a case can be presented to both the federal judge and a jury simultaneously, with the judge considering the jury to be “advisory” with regard to the liability of the federally-funded provider. Needless to say, this can be a very complicated procedure with numerous pitfalls for attorneys. Theoretically, a plaintiff could lose entirely if the jury decided it was the federally-funded provider who was liable, but the judge decided it was the other provider. The judge, of course, would have no authority to impose liability on that provider.
