MCG Health, Inc. v. Barton

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

MCG Health, Inc. v. Barton, Nos. A07A1060, A07A1061 (Ga. Ct. App. May 25, 2007)

The Court of Appeals of Georgia affirmed a lower court’s denial of summary judgment motions, filed on behalf of a hospital and a university in a medical malpractice suit, holding that the patient’s medical expert was qualified to testify and a genuine issue of fact existed as to whether the physicians’ delay in performing diagnostic procedures was the proximate cause of the patient’s loss of an organ.

The hospital and university asserted that the lower court erred by failing to exclude the expert’s testimony since the expert, an emergency room physician, lacked the requisite surgical and specialty experience. The court disagreed, noting that the ultimate issue was whether the hospital staff and the university’s physicians committed malpractice by failing to timely evaluate the patient’s injury, not whether the physician negligently performed the exploratory surgery or negligently removed the patient’s organ. As such, the patient’s medical expert possessed the requisite knowledge and experience in the applicable area of practice.