THE SUPREME COURT has upheld the solidary liability of the owners of the Medical City General Hospital and Dr. Miguel Ampil, a member of its surgical staff, amounting to over Php3 million for medical negligence for leaving behind two pieces of gauze inside a cancer patient’s body during surgery in 1984.
     In a decision penned by Justice Angelina Sandoval-Gutierrez, the Court’s First Division affirmed the Court of Appeals’ September 6, 1996 decision affirming with modification the March 17, 1993 decision of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court, Branch 96 and nullifying the RTC’s order dated September 21, 1993. The Court held both the Professional Services, Inc. (PSI), owner of the Medical City Hospital, and Dr. Ampil liable for the injury sustained by Natividad Agana.
     The Court said Dr. Ampil’s negligence was the proximate cause of Natividad’s injury, which could be traced from his act of closing the incision despite the information given by the attending nurses that two pieces of gauze were still missing. It found that Dr. Ampil did not inform Natividad about the two missing pieces of gauze. Worse, he even misled her that the pain she experienced after the procedure was the ordinary consequence of her operation. Natividad died in 1986. “To our mind, what was initially an act of negligence by Dr. Ampil has ripened into a deliberate wrongful act of deceiving his patient…This is a clear case of medical malpractice or more appropriately, medical negligence,” the Court said.
     Citing Ramos v. CA, the Court said that PSI was liable since an employer-employee relationship exists between PSI and Dr. Ampil. By accrediting Dr. Ampil and publicly advertising his qualifications, the hospital created the impression that Dr. Ampil was its agent, authorized to perform medical or surgical services for its patients, it added. (Professional Services, Inc v. Agana and Agana, GR No. 126297; Agana, et al. v. Fuentes, GR No. 126467; Ampil v. Agana and Agana; GR No. 127590; January 31, 2007)