A 2014 Washington Supreme Court case (Grove v. PeaceHealth St. Joseph Hospital) held that different health care providers, who are part of a “team” of hospital employees, can be collectively liable for a patient’s injuries. The case involved a man who had heart surgery and, afterwards, developed a condition called “compartment syndrome” in which unsafe pressures built up in one of his legs. Because of a delay in diagnosing and treating the condition, he suffered permanent muscle and nerve damage in the leg, resulting in a “drop foot” condition.

The trial court judge had dismissed the case because the claimant did not present expert testimony about each of the provider’s negligence and whether that was a cause of the injury. The Court of Appeals upheld that decision but was reversed by the Washington Supreme Court in the decision noted above.

In the past, it was required that a claimant had to present expert testimony about the negligence of each hospital provider who contributed to a patient’s injury. In many cases, that would have meant having experts in such fields as nursing, respiratory care, surgery, and hospital medicine, even though each provider was employed by the hospital and the injury was the result of different decisions at varying times by the providers. This resulted in greater expense in hiring numerous experts. And sometimes there was difficulty in linking any one provider’s negligence, which may have been limited in time, to the poor outcome.

The Supreme Court’s decision reflects the changing nature of hospital care. Many hospitals have acquired medical practices, such as surgical groups, and made them hospital employees. A parallel trend has been increasing hospital use of hired “hospitalists” who care for patients alongside, or in addition to, surgeons and other specialists. Hospital care is now much more of a “team” approach, with different providers seeing the patient during a hospital stay and coordinating care with other providers, such as radiologists, respiratory technicians, or pain medicine specialists.

The Grove case does not eliminate the need for a plaintiff to present expert testimony both as to negligence and causation, but it allows an expert to express opinions about the collective negligence of different kinds of health care providers who cared for the patient and how that collective negligence resulted in injury.