Damage suits against incompetent doctors and negligent hospitals

When a patient dies or becomes comatose due to the proven failures of medical doctors, exacerbated by the hospital's lack of proper supervision or insufficient equipment and supplies, victims and their families may come to court and ask for actual, compensatory, moral, and exemplary damages. The guilty parties may be ordered to pay millions in damages and the licenses of both doctor and hospital may face a very serious jeopardy.

In the case of Ramos vs. CA (GR 124354) decided on December 29, 1999, the Supreme Court decided “The Hippocratic Oath mandates physicians to give primordial consideration to the health and welfare of their patients. If a doctor fails to live up to this precept, he is made accountable for his acts. A mistake through gross negligence or incompetence, or plain human error, may spell the difference between life and death. In this sense, the doctor plays God on his patient's fate. In this case, a lady, who was a healthy, and robust woman, entered a hospital in Metro Manila, walking on her own to have a gall bladder operation. Due to error in the administration of anesthesia, she ended up being comatose with a very serious brain damage.”

In another case, PSI vs. CA (GR 126297, etc.) decided on February 2, 2010, some surgeons recklessly left two pieces of gauze inside the stomach of the patient and closed the incision after surgery. That patient needed to fly to the US to undergo corrective surgery. This was a major blunder that could have been avoided that these doctors exercised due diligence demanded by the delicate nature of the medical procedures. In the Ramos case, the doctors and the hospital were declared guilty and condemned to pay P1.352 million. plus P8,000 every month for the entire lifetime, moral damages of P2 million, temperate damages of P1.5 million and exemplary damages of P100,000. PSI was ordered to pay P15 million plus interest.

In both cases, the doctors and the hospitals were admonished by the highest court to exercise utmost care in undertaking mankind's most delicate endeavors, the practice of medicine and surgery. The court found fault in the doctor under Article 2176 of the Civil Code when one, by his act or omission, causes damage to another, there being fault or negligence, he is obliged to pay for the damage inflicted. The court also found the hospital liable under Article 2180 whereby the Civil Code provides that the obligation to pay damages is not only on one's own acts but also for the fault or negligence of one's employees and agents. The hospital is guilty under the doctrine of apparent authority, even if these doctors are not the employees of the hospital.

The Supreme Court applied the doctrine of ''res ipsa loquitor'' to this case. Said the High Court: Medical malpractice cases do not escape the application of this doctrine. Thus, ''res ipsa loquitor'' has been applied when the circumstances attendant upon the harm are themselves of such character as to justify an inference of negligence as the cause of that harm." We do not have to be a genius to infer that when a walking patient is admitted to a hospital, and later, leaves comatose, the doctors and the hospital must necessarily be answerable for the damage inflicted on her. The thing speaks for itself. Hospitals indeed and their doctors must shape up. The lives of their patients are in their hands. Any death due to their negligence is blood on their hands.

The court ended its elucidation in the Ramos case: "The failure to observe pre-operative assessment protocol which would have influenced the intubation in a salutary way was fatal to the doctors and the hospital.” In the PSI case, the Supreme Court said that the corporate negligence of the hospital is distinct from the medical negligence of the doctor. If you ask me, the doctors' license should be cancelled. The hospital should be closed permanently. This is equivalent to death penalty. No more and no less.