Legal Question in Business Law in Texas

Vague Contract Item

I work for a hospital. Various medical services are contracted out i.e. anesthesia, surgery etc. Each contractor has agreed upon certain ''quality'' contract indicators. These indicators are often very vague at best. Example: Time of epidural request until anesthesia response time to the request. The anesthesia department feels that the time should start when nursing notifies the anesthesia department of a patients request for the epidural. My boss, the quality manager, with no legal or contract experience, interpets the starting time to mean the time the patient requested the epidural. I feel that the contract is not specific enough and therefore, both numbers would meet the requirment. The anesthesia department contract indicator states that they will have a median response time to epidural requests of 15 minutes. This median response time would vary greatly by how time of request for epidural is defined. As an example, a patient requests an epidural at 1200, nursing notifies anesthesia at 2:00 and anesthesia responds at 2:05. Using my bosses definition, anesthesia response time would be 64 minutes. Using my definition, it would be 4 minutes. What does the law say? Thank you!


Asked on 5/05/06, 6:57 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Peter Bradie Bradie, Bradie & Bradie

Re: Vague Contract Item

The law says that's a fact question to be decided on a case-by-case basis. As a practical matter, if some calls for anesthesia at 12:00 and the anesthesia department doesn't get the message until 2:00, heads will roll if that results in a medical malpractice suit. And the jury will find that a two-hour delay on a request for pain reduction is negligent.

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Answered on 5/05/06, 7:32 pm


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