Wagner v. Ohio State Univ. Med. Ctr. (Summary)

PHYSICIAN EMPLOYMENT

Wagner v. Ohio State Univ. Med. Ctr., No. 12AP-399 (Ohio Ct. App. June 13, 2013)

The Court of Appeals of Ohio affirmed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of a medical center, holding that the medical center was not liable for a patient’s injury because the injury suffered was not foreseeable and the physician who had caused it had acted outside his scope of employment.  A patient sued the medical center after a pain management physician who had been employed by the medical center came to the patient’s home and began siphoning medication from the patient’s pain pump for his own personal use.  The physician had been dealing with a substance abuse problem for several years and the medical center had recently terminated his employment following the suspension of his medical license.  The physician had made regular visits to the patient’s home, under the guise of doing pain management research, and would remove medication from the patient’s pain pump, causing him to suffer from an infection and other complications.  The medical center discovered what the physician was doing after he diverted pain medication from a second patient’s pump and that patient notified the medical center.  The medical center alerted law enforcement and sent a notice to all pain clinic patients that the physician was no longer affiliated with the medical center.  The court held that no special relationship existed in this case that would have required the medical center to protect this particular patient above all others.  The medical center never approved the research the physician claimed to be conducting.  Furthermore, the risk of pain pump theft was not apparent to the medical center until it started occurring at the second patient’s home, and it was immediately after that discovery that the medical center took reasonable steps to protect additional patients.  The court also considered the medical center’s steps of limiting the physician’s access to drugs and patients even while he still had a partial faculty appointment at the medical center, determining that they were reasonable as well.