Background
Russell Foust entered an Indiana hospital with septic shock and died ten days later. As his death approached, a hospital intensive-care nurse referred him to an organ procurement organization. Although the nurse supplied Russell’s correct name and birth date, the organization’s coordinator matched him to a different person in Indiana’s donor registry. The coordinator therefore recorded Russell as a registered donor, found him eligible to donate corneal tissue, and relayed that information to the hospital and an eye bank.
Russell’s wife, Diana Foust, was surprised because anatomical donation conflicted with the family’s religion, but she believed the registry reflected her husband’s wishes and consented. The eye bank removed Russell’s corneal tissue. The next day it discovered the mismatch and told Diana that Russell had never registered. Diana first initiated Indiana medical-malpractice proceedings, then sued the hospital, procurement organization, coordinator, and eye bank directly for negligent infliction of emotional distress based on the failure to verify the registry match.
The trial court preliminarily determined that Indiana’s Medical Malpractice Act did not govern the claims. It also denied the hospital’s summary-judgment motion, which argued that the hospital neither searched the registry nor had a duty under Indiana’s Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act to do so. The court certified both rulings for interlocutory appeal, producing consolidated appeals on the MMA’s scope and the hospital’s statutory duty.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals held that the registry-search allegations sound in ordinary negligence, not medical malpractice. Judge Leanna Weissmann explained that the MMA is limited to tort or contract claims based on health care or professional services furnished to a patient. Indiana precedent treats covered conduct as curative, salutary, or otherwise directed toward promoting the patient’s health and often asks whether resolving the claim requires the medical community’s professional standard of care.
Searching the donor registry was not intended to benefit Russell’s health. It was performed to identify a possible anatomical gift for an unknown recipient after his death. The panel relied on an earlier case holding that injections given to a healthy blood donor for the benefit of third-party patients were outside the MMA. A health benefit to an unidentified recipient does not transform the conduct into health care for the claimant or the person whose treatment gives rise to a derivative claim. Nor could the providers characterize the search as honoring Russell’s wishes when the record showed no such wish and the search produced the wrong person.
The hospital nevertheless won summary judgment on a separate issue. Indiana’s Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act provides that, after a hospital refers an individual at or near death, the procurement organization must reasonably search the donor registry. The statute assigns that duty to the procurement organization, not to the referring hospital. Because the coordinator—not the hospital—performed the mistaken search, and Diana identified no other source requiring the hospital to conduct an independent search, the hospital could not be liable for breaching that duty. The panel did not reach the hospital’s alternative statutory-immunity argument.
Key Takeaways
- The Indiana Medical Malpractice Act does not cover every negligent act involving a qualified provider or occurring inside a hospital; the substance and purpose of the challenged conduct control.
- A donor-registry search intended to facilitate a postmortem gift for a third party is not curative or salutary care furnished to the donor.
- Indiana’s anatomical-gift statute places the reasonable-search obligation on the procurement organization after a hospital makes the referral.
- A plaintiff opposing summary judgment should identify every asserted duty and its source; an undeveloped alternative theory may not preserve the claim against a particular defendant.
Why It Matters
The decision sharpens the boundary between ordinary negligence and malpractice under Indiana’s distinctive Medical Malpractice Act, which generally requires a medical-review-panel process before suit and supplies special procedural protections. Providers cannot bring a claim within that framework merely by pointing to a clinical setting. Counsel should isolate the precise act alleged, who was meant to benefit, and whether medical expertise is necessary to judge it.
For hospitals and procurement organizations, the opinion also clarifies statutory role allocation in anatomical gifts. A hospital’s referral does not itself make the hospital responsible for duplicating the procurement organization’s registry search. Plaintiffs may still pursue the actors who allegedly performed the search negligently, but claims against each defendant must track the duty the legislature actually assigned.