Included here are updates for Creating the Patient-Physician Relationship, note 2 and Creating the Patient-Physician Relationship, note 4.

Creating the Patient-Physician Relationship, note 2

In addressing when a physician-patient relationship is created with a specialist on-call to an emergency department, the Tennessee Supreme Court observed that "it is simply unrealistic to apply a narrow definition of the physician-patient relationship" in a health care system in which patients are routinely diagnosed by "consulting physicians who might not ever see the patient face-to-face."  Accordingly, wrote the Court, "a physician-patient relationship may be implied when a physician affirmatively undertakes to diagnose and/or treat a person, or affirmatively participates in such diagnosis or treatment."  Kelley v. Middle Tennessee Emergency Physicians, 133 S.W.3d 587 (Tenn. 2004) (finding a patient-physician relationship when a cardiologist discussed a patient's medical condition over the phone with an emergency physician who was seeing the patient at a hospital's emergency department).

Creating the Patient-Physician Relationship, note 4

Like the Welke, Cram and other courts, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and an intermediate court of appeals in Kentucky have found a duty to third parties when injury was reasonably foreseeable. Coombes v. Florio, 877 N.E.2d 567 (Mass. 2007) (patient taking 8 drugs that had significant, cumulative sedative effects, became unconscious while driving, and killed a pedestrian); Schrand v. Grant, 1999 Ky. App. LEXIS 76 (July 2, 1999) (case in which the patient was driving while under the influence of Demerol when she collided with another vehicle and killed an occupant of the other vehicle). When the Kentucky Supreme Court denied review, it withdrew the decision from publication.

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