Over the years, this column has on several occasions addressed the circumstances under which health care providers may be held liable to someone other than a patient.1 Generally, there must be a physician-patient or a hospital-patient relationship for a legal duty of care to exist, upon which liability may be founded.2 However, the courts have found that under certain circumstances a duty may exist to persons who are not patients. We last visited this subject 11 years ago, and there have since been a number of appellate decisions that may help define the parameters of such liability.
This issue may currently be of particular interest in view of recent incidents involving the Ebola virus in this country. For instance, the news reports from Texas of a symptomatic patient being discharged from an emergency room after he reported he recently returned from a West African country highlights the potential impact that medical negligence can have on non-patients. Fortunately, no one with whom that patient came in contact after his discharge contracted the virus. But what if they had? Can a hospital be held liable to people who were not its patients, but who nevertheless become sick as a result of mistakes in treating a patient? The answer to this question lies in the cases analyzing whether health care providers may be liable to non-patients.
Court of Appeals Cases
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