Rockefeller v. Kaiser Found. Health Plan of Ga.

Kimberly Rockefeller brought this medical malpractice action against a health maintenance organization HMO of which she was a member and against various of its corporate affiliates and individual employees. She complains that a physician’s assistant PA, supervised by physicians who had been not been approved by the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners the Board, treated her and performed tasks not authorized by his job description on file with the Board. For these reasons, she claims that the defendants committed negligence per se by violating the Physician’s Assistant Act PAA or the Act1 and regulations implemented by the Board under the Act.2 She moved for partial summary judgment on her claim of negligence per se. The trial court denied the motion. We granted Rockefeller’s application for interlocutory appeal.

Rockefeller was a member of an HMO incorporated as Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Georgia and doing business as Kaiser Permanente. Dr. Bruce Sabin was her primary care physician. He was employed by a Kaiser subsidiary at the Gwinnett Medical Center on Pleasant Hill Road in Duluth, Georgia. Drs. Sean Murphy and Martin Ettinger and PA Jimmy McPeters were also employed there. Sabin filed an application with the Board for utilization of McPeters as a PA. Although certain other physicians were listed as additional supervising physicians, Murphy and Ettinger were not.