The Indiana Medical Malpractice Act, which was enacted in 1975, grants authority over medical malpractice actions first to a medical review panel, which must render an opinion on a proposed complaint before a claimant can sue a healthcare provider in court. During this review-panel process, trial courts have limited authority to intervene and grant relief.
Six patients of a deceased physician filed Indiana medical malpractice actions against his estate and his practice alleging the physician breached the standard of care. In support of those allegations, the patients submitted materials to medical review panels, including medical records, narrative statements, testimony from other doctors, and a wrongful death complaint the physician’s wife had filed in a separate malpractice action. The physician’s wife, who is also a doctor, filed her wrongful death complaint with the DOI against a hospital following her husband’s death. That third-party complaint alleged that her husband “suffered from chronic alcohol and drug abuse” and was released from a hospital’s emergency department on the night he died, even though he “was visibly intoxicated, showed signs of delusional ideation, mental illness, grave disability, and was aggressive and dangerous, among other things.”
The defendants filed a petition with the trial court, seeking redaction of the wife’s complaint, as well as any mention of its contents in the patients’ submissions.
The Indiana Medical Malpractice Act (MMA) provides only three ways a trial court can grant relief before the panel issues its opinion. A court can dismiss a case if no action has been taken for at least two years. I.C. § 34-18-8-8. A court can “preliminarily determine an affirmative defense or issue of law or fact that may be preliminarily determined under the Indiana Rules of Procedure” or “compel discovery in accordance with the Indiana Rules of Procedure.” I.C. § 34-18-11-1(a). And a court can issue a mandate or impose sanctions on a “party, attorney, or panelist who fails to act as required by” the chapter governing medical review panels “without good cause shown.” I.C. § 34-18-10-14.
The trial court granted the defendants’ petition.
The Indiana Supreme Court stated in its May 9, 2024 Opinion: “The plain, unambiguous language of Section 34-18-10-17 does not provide trial courts with the authority to redact or otherwise exclude evidence a party submits to the medical review panel. The statute requires parties to “promptly” submit “evidence in written form to be considered
by the medical review panel.” I.C. § 34-18-10-17(a). And that “evidence may consist of medical charts, x-rays, lab tests, excerpts of treatises, depositions of witnesses including parties, and any other form of evidence allowable by the medical review panel.” Id. § -17(b) … the statute does not restrict the type of evidence that may be submitted other than it be “allowable” by the panel … we conclude that trial courts have no authority to act as gatekeeper of the evidence a party submits to a medical review panel. And because we conclude that the third-party complaint here is evidence, we hold that the court lacked the authority to order the patients to redact their submissions … trial courts have no authority under Section 34-18-10-14 to act as gatekeeper of the evidence a party submits to the medical review panel. And that evidence includes any material submitted by a party that tends to produce conviction in the mind as to the existence of an alleged fact. Because the challenged third-party complaint here falls within this definition as evidence allowable by the panel, the trial court lacked the authority to order Patients to redact their submissions.”
Source Bojko v. Anonymous Physician, No. 23S-CT-343.
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