Hospital negligence claims address the institutional liability of hospitals for harm caused to patients, separate from the personal liability of individual physicians, nurses, or other professionals. In Ontario, hospitals can be liable directly for failures in systems, equipment, supervision, credentialing, staffing, or protocols, and they can be liable vicariously for the conduct of their employees, including nurses and resident physicians. Most attending physicians, by contrast, are independent contractors with hospital privileges rather than employees, which constrains vicarious liability for their conduct.
The distinction between hospital and physician liability matters at every stage of a case: the limitation analysis under section 5 of the Limitations Act, 2002 may run differently against the institution and the physician, the discovery obligations differ, the expert evidence required differs, and the available defendants in a settlement or judgment differ.
Posts tagged Hospital Negligence analyze Ontario cases in which the hospital’s own conduct, as distinct from any individual practitioner’s, has been at issue: nursing supervision, communication systems, transfer protocols, equipment failures, and the institutional response to deteriorating patients.
Paul Cahill settled a medical malpractice claim involving permanent vestibular damage from unmonitored outpatient gentamicin therapy.
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