Legal Memorandum: Continuing Treatment Doctrine and Malpractice

Issue: Whether the continuing treatment doctrine applies to the statute of repose in a malpractice scenario.

Under the continuing treatment or continuum of treatment doctrine, a statute of limitations or repose does not begin to run until the last treatment if (1) “there was a continuous and unbroken course of negligent treatment,” and (2) “the treatment was so related as to constitute one continuing wrong.”  Langner v. Simpson, 533 N.W.2d 511, 519 (Iowa 1995) (citation omitted).  In McDonald v. Buena Vista Clinic, No. 02-0062 (Iowa App. Dec. 30, 2002), the Iowa Court of Appeals observed that the Langner court did not need to reach the question of whether the continuing treatment doctrine applied to the medical malpractice statute of limitations.  See also Ratcliff v. Graether, 697 N.W.2d 119 (Iowa 2005) (the supreme court also not reaching the question of whether the continuing  treatment doctrine applied in general because it did not apply on the facts of the case).  The McDonald court also did not reach the question of whether the doctrine applied to the statute of repose in § 614.1(9).  Thus, as with the constitutionality question, the Iowa Supreme Court has not had occasion to address head-on the issue whether the continuing treatment doctrine applies to the statute of repose in § 614.1(9). 

However, also as with the issue of the statute’s violation of the open courts provision of the state constitution, so too does Iowa case law lend support to a finding that the continuing treatment doctrine should apply to toll the triggering of § 614.1(9).  In a context outside […]