Medical malpractice; Wrongful death; Pandemic Health Care Immunity Act (PHCIA) immunity for medical services in support of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic; MCL 691.1475; “Connection”; Skipper-Baines v Board of Hosp Managers for Flint

Concluding that the trial court erred by granting defendants’ motion for summary disposition on the basis of PHCIA immunity in this medical malpractice/wrongful death case, the court reversed and remanded. The case arose “from an incident during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic where the decedent, [Newton], fell and sustained injuries during the course of receiving medical treatment at” defendant-McLaren. Plaintiff argued that the trial court erred in granting McLaren summary disposition based on “PHCIA immunity because there was no evidence of a sufficient connection between the medical services defendants provided to Newton and services provided by defendants in support of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The court held that there was “simply no record evidence of an actual connection between the decedent’s fall and services related to providing COVID-19 treatment beyond . . . entirely speculative assertions. Had there been evidence that the medical staff was actually so consumed with other COVID-related patient services that nobody was available to respond to the decedent’s chair alarm, then the requisite connection could have potentially been established.” In this case, defendant-nurse “actually testified that the number of patients that had been assigned to her on that day was within the typical normal range. Without any evidence that these patients, or other patients assigned to other staff, were somehow consuming more of the staffing resources than normal, there is no basis on which to conclude that there was any connection between COVID-19 and the injuries that led to the decedent’s death in this case. There was also no evidence that defendants were somehow prevented from providing appropriate fall mitigation strategies because of the pandemic.”