Riley, J.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants-Defendants, Mark S. Weinberger, M.D., (Weinberger), and Mark S. Weinberger, M.D., P.C. Merrillville Center for Advance Surgery, LLC, and Nose and Sinus Center, LLC. (collectively, the Weinberger Entities), appeal the jury’s award of damages in the amount of $300,000 to Appellee-Plaintiff, William Boyer (Boyer), following Boyer’s Complaint for medical malpractice.
We affirm.
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At the close of Boyer’s case-in-chief, the Weinberger Entities moved for a judgment on the evidence with respect to Weinberger’s abandonment of Boyer. The Weinberger Entities asserted that in order to successfully raise a claim for abandonment, Boyer had to present evidence that his abandonment occurred at a critical stage of the patient’s treatment. Because ‘patient abandonment’ has not yet been addressed by Indiana courts, the Weinberger Entities focused on out-of-state case law characterizing ‘a critical stage’ as being in need of immediate medical care at the time of the alleged abandonment. See, e.g., Carroll v. Griffin, 101 S.E.2d 764, 766 (Ga. Ct. App. 1958). In response, Boyer averred that Weinberger’s abandonment exacerbated his anguish arising from Weinberger’s malpractice rather than constituted an independent tort. Specifically, Boyer stated:
This is a medical malpractice case, it’s a breach on standard of care for abandoning a patient. We have alleged it from day one in our submission that he abandoned [Boyer] postoperatively.
(Tr. p. 1146).
Reviewing the record, we note that the trial court instructed the jury on Boyer’s “medical malpractice suit against [the Weinberger Entities],” defining medical malpractice as
[a]n act of malpractice [is committed] when the health care provider fails to exercise the degree of reasonable care and skill in providing health care to a patient as would a reasonably careful, skillful and prudent health care provider acting under the same or similar circumstances. The malpractice may consist of doing something that the health care provider should not have done under the circumstances, or the failure to do something that the health care provider should have done under the circumstances.
(Tr. pp. 1305, 1319). In this regard, the Weinberger Entities admitted in their issue instruction read to the jury that
In this lawsuit, [Boyer] claims that [Weinberger] owed him a duty of reasonable care in providing medical care to him and that he breached the appropriate standard of care by committing the following acts of medical malpractice . . . [Weinberger] failed to tell [Boyer] that he was departing the country and failed to arrange a referral to another physician for [Boyer’s] subsequent case such that he abandoned [Boyer].
(Tr. pp 1305, 1306). The trial court did not instruct the jury that abandonment constituted an independent tort upon which liability could be predicated.
Viewing the jury instructions in their totality, the Weinberger Entities conceded that Weinberger’s abandonment of Boyer should be evaluated in light of Weinberger’s standard of care in the medical malpractice suit, i.e., something that he should not have done under the circumstances, and not as an independent tort claim.5 [Fn 5: While we concur that a claim for patient abandonment has not previously been decided upon by an Indiana appellate tribunal, several of our sister states have already had the opportunity to elaborate on the elements of such contention. We find particularly persuasive the recent opinion in Melton v. Medtronic, Inc., 698 S.E.2d 886, 893 (S.C. Ct. App. 2010) in which the South Carolina Court of Appeals, relying on an earlier South Carolina Supreme Court decision, opined that it saw little need to recognize an additional cause of action related to tortious injuries arising out of interactions with medical providers when the tort of medical malpractice covers all acts performed in relation to medical services.] As only a claim for medical malpractice was made and no separate tort claim for patient abandonment was raised, the Weinberger Entities’ motion for judgment on the evidence was not directed at a critical or essential element of the medical malpractice claim but rather at an underlying issue with respect to the standard of care. Therefore, the trial court properly denied the Weinberger Entities’ motion.
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Affirmed.
NAJAM, J. and MAY, J. concur