BAKER, C.J.
Appellant-respondent Suzanne Eads appeals the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of appellee-petitioner Community Hospital (the Hospital). Eads argues that the trial court erred by concluding that (1) the Journey’s Account Statute did not apply to her case and (2) her medical malpractice claim was untimely filed. Finding no error, we affirm.
On August 15, 2004, Eads was a patient at the Hospital, having received treatment for an ankle injury. As part of that treatment, Eads’s ankle was placed in a cast. Following her treatment, she requested a wheelchair to exit the Hospital, but Hospital personnel refused her request. Instead, a Hospital employee told her that “she could leave the [H]ospital on crutches.” Appellant’s App. p. 9. As Eads was exiting the Hospital, she passed through the foyer area leading to the garage, where she fell.
On August 8, 2006, Eads filed a complaint against the Hospital in Lake Superior Court (the Negligence Complaint). The Negligence Complaint sought damages for injuries to Eads’s back and left hand that she alleged she sustained as a result of the Hospital’s negligent refusal to provide her with a wheelchair. The Negligence Complaint was filed within the applicable statute of limitations.
On February 21, 2007, the Hospital filed a motion to dismiss the Negligence Complaint without prejudice, arguing that the Superior Court lacked jurisdiction because it was actually a medical malpractice claim that first had to be filed before the Indiana Department of Insurance (“IDOI”).3 In response, Eads insisted that her claim was based on a premises liability theory and, as such, was not covered by the Medical Malpractice Act (“MMA”).4 The Superior Court agreed with the Hospital and, on April 12, 2007, dismissed the case without prejudice, having found that the Hospital employee’s decision to refuse Eads a wheelchair involved medical judgment, which brought the action within the MMA. Eads did not appeal from that order.
On March 26, 2007, just over two weeks before the Superior Court’s dismissal of the Negligence Claim, Eads filed a proposed medical malpractice complaint with the IDOI, relying on the same facts recounted in the Negligence Complaint. On February 6, 2008, the Hospital invoked the jurisdiction of the trial court under Indiana Code section 34-18-11-15 when it filed a petition for preliminary determination of law, requesting summary judgment in favor of the Hospital, arguing that the medical malpractice claim was barred as a matter of law because it was filed outside of the two-year statute of limitations.6 Following a hearing, the trial court herein entered an order on June 11, 2008, dismissing Eads’s malpractice claim with prejudice:
The Court finds that no genuine issues of material fact exist that would preclude granting a motion for summary judgment under the Trial Rules. Pursuant to Indiana Trial Rule 56, Respondent Suzanne Eads’ claims against Petitioner Community Hospital are barred by the Statute of Limitation[s]. Therefore, Petitioner’s Petition for Determination of Summary Judgment in favor of Community Hospital is GRANTED. Respondent’s claims against Petitioner Community Hospital are hereby dismissed, with prejudice.
Appellant’s App. p. 6. Eads now appeals.
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It is undisputed that Eads filed her malpractice claim with the IDOI after the applicable two-year statute of limitations had run. To rescue her claim, Eads directs our attention to the Journey’s Account Statute.
The Journey’s Account Statute provides as follows:
(a) This section applies if a plaintiff commences an action and:
(1) the plaintiff fails in the action from any cause except negligence in the prosecution of the action;
(2) the action abates or is defeated by the death of a party; or
(3) a judgment is arrested or reversed on appeal.
(b) If subsection (a) applies, a new action may be brought not later than the later of:
(1) three (3) years after the date of the determination under subsection (a); or
(2) the last date an action could have been commenced under the statute of limitations governing the original action;
and be considered a continuation of the original action commenced by the plaintiff.
I.C. § 34-11-8-1. The purpose of the Journey’s Account Statute is to preserve the right of a diligent suitor to pursue a judgment on the merits. Keenan v. Butler, 869 N.E.2d 1284, 1290 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007). The statute is to be liberally construed to protect such diligent suitors. Vesolowski v. Repay, 520 N.E.2d 433, 434 (Ind. 1988).
As our Supreme Court has explained,
The Journey’s Account Statute applies by its terms to preserve only a “new action” that may be “a continuation of the first.” Its typical use is to save an action filed in the wrong court by allowing the plaintiff enough time to refile the same claim in the correct forum. For example, the statute enables an action dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction in one state to be refiled in another state despite the intervening running of the statute of limitations.
Cox v. Am. Aggregates Corp., 684 N.E.2d 193, 195 (Ind. 1997). Therefore, if Eads’s malpractice claim is to be rescued by the Journey’s Account Statute, she must establish, among other things, that her malpractice claim is a continuation of the Negligence Complaint.
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Here, as in McGill, Eads did not file an initial medical malpractice complaint in a timely manner in the wrong forum. To the contrary, she filed the Negligence Complaint and vigorously disputed the Hospital’s suggestion that her complaint sounded in medical malpractice rather than negligence, waiting to file the malpractice claim with the IDOI until two weeks before the trial court dismissed the Negligence Complaint for lack of jurisdiction.
If Eads believed that her claim sounded in general negligence, then the trial court’s dismissal of her complaint must have been incorrect and she should have appealed that judgment. She did not. If she believed that her claim could feasibly have sounded either in general negligence or in medical malpractice, then she should have filed in the alternative in a timely fashion. She did not.
Although it is true that the factual predicate of and parties involved in Eads’s medical malpractice claim are identical to those involved in the Negligence Complaint, the actual claim-the source of the alleged liability-is wholly different. There is a basic distinction between a common law claim of negligence and the statutory medical malpractice regime. Thus, whatever the similarities may be, there is a fundamental difference that prevents the application of the Journey’s Account Statute. To hold otherwise would permit plaintiffs an untimely second bite at the apple, and we do not believe that to be the intent of the legislature in crafting the statute.
Inasmuch as we have found that the medical malpractice claim is not a continuation of the Negligence Complaint, the Journey’s Account Statute does not apply. Therefore, we are left with a medical malpractice claim that was untimely filed with the IDOI outside the statute of limitations, and we find that the trial court properly granted summary judgment in the Hospital’s favor.
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
NAJAM, J., concurs.
KIRSCH, J., dissents with opinion.
KIRSCH, Judge, dissenting.
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Suzanne Eads was a diligent suitor who has a right to have her case heard on the merits. By the filing of her original action, Community Hospital had timely notice of her claim and the full opportunity to investigate its merits and to defend its position. The purposes of the Journey Account Statute were thus satisfied. Contrary to these purposes, my colleagues narrowly construe the statute to defeat Eads’ claim without the opportunity to be heard on the merits. I believe such a construction is neither good law, nor good policy. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
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. . . [M]ore than thirty years after the MMA’s enactment, our courts continue to struggle with the question of what distinguishes claims as sounding in medical malpractice. Indeed, the broad spectrum of gray that lies between pure malpractice and ordinary non-medical negligence, which Judge Sullivan referred to in his dissent in Pluard, continues to exist. Where a party diligently and timely pursues in good faith a claim of general negligence, and such claim later fails for lack of subject matter jurisdiction upon a finding that the action was, in fact, one of medical malpractice, the Journey Account Statute should permit the filing of the medical malpractice claim. That is the purpose of the statute.
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