(2) "Health care" means any act or treatment performed or furnished, or which should have been performed or furnished, by any health care provider for, to, or on behalf of a patient during the patient's medical care, treatment, or confinement.
(3) "Health care provider" means any person, partnership, professional association, corporation, facility, or institution duly licensed or chartered by the State of Texas to provide health care as a registered nurse, hospital, dentist, podiatrist, pharmacist, or nursing home, or an officer, employee,or agent thereof acting in the course and scope of his employment.
(4) "Health care liability claim" means a cause of action against a health care provider or physician for treatment, lack of treatment, or other claimed departure from accepted standards of medical care or health care or safety which proximately results in injury to or death of the patient, whether the patient's claim or cause of action sounds in tort or contract.
Notwithstanding any other law, no health care liability claim may be commenced unless the action is filed within two years from the occurrence of the breach or tort or from the date the medical or health care treatment that is the subject of the claim or the hospitalization for which the claim is made is completed; provided that, minors under the age of twelve years shall have until their fourteenth birthday in which to file, or have filed on their behalf, the claim. Except as herein provided, this subchapter applies to all persons regardless of minority or other legal disability.
Brown v. Shwarts, 968 S.W.2d 331 (Tex. 1998), aff'g in part and rev'g in part, 929 S.W.2d 609 (Tex. App.--Waco 1997). (A wrongful death action filed two years and 76 days after an alleged prenatal injury was time-barred, but the survival action on behalf of the newborn was not barred.)
Neie v. Stevenson, 663 S.W.2d 917 (Tex. Ct. App. 1983). (An action for childbirth despite the performance of a tubal ligation designed to sterilize the plaintiff is barred by passage of the statutory period, notwithstanding the contention that the discovery rule should govern, where the action is filed more than two years after the defendant could have been guilty of malpractice.)
Allbee v. Day, 616 S.W.2d 270 (Tex. Ct. App. 1981). (The two-year statute begins to run on the date of the alleged medical negligence, not on the date when the injured person's claim for workmen's compensation for the original injury is paid.)
Slater v. National Medical Enterprises, Inc., 962 S.W.2d 228, 233 (Tex. App.--Ft. Worth 1998). (Limitations on an action by a former psychiatric patient, alleging that the defendant hospitals and treating physicians engaged in a fraudulent scheme to admit patients, including the plaintiff, for the sole purpose of obtaining insurance payments, in violation of the plaintiff's rights, began to run upon the plaintiff's dismissal from each hospital and upon her last session with each individual physician.)
Rivera v. Mitchell, 764 S.W.2d 393 (Tex. Ct. App. 1989). (The plaintiff filed a malpractice action for misdiagnosis of an illness. The Court of Appeals of Texas affirmed the summary judgment entered in favor of the defendant-treating physician, holding that the two-year statute of limitations began to run on the date of the hospital discharge (the date of last treatment), rather than on the date the misdiagnosis was discovered.)
Morrison v. Chan, 668 S.W.2d 483 (Tex. Ct. App. 1984), aff'd 699 S.W.2d 205 (Tex. 1985). (An action for negligence in giving radiation therapy for cancer, resulting in a hole between the bladder and the vagina, accrues on the date of the last radiation treatment and not on the date when the consequent injury (the hole in the bladder wall) developed.)
Atha v. Polsky, 667 S.W.2d 307 (Tex. Ct. App. 1984). (An action brought more than two years after the negligent treatment was held barred, notwithstanding the plaintiff's contention that the statute is tolled as long as the physician-patient relationship exists, even if it exists only in reference to medical matters unassociated with the claim.) Wright v. Fowler, 991 S.W.2d 343, 348 (Tex. App.--Ft. Worth 1999). (The statute began to run on the plaintiff's claim for autoimmune disease caused by silicone cheek implants on the date of the last silicone injection, not on the date the implants were removed.
The court rejected the plaintiff's argument that the action did not accrue until the implants were removed because the removal of the implants was not the complained-of act of negligence; rather, the allegedly negligent acts were the implants and injections.)
Hellman v. Mateo, 772 S.W.2d 64 (Tex. 1989). (The evidence showed that there was a material question of fact as to whether the plaintiff knew or should have known of the doctor's erroneous diagnosis of her before the statute of limitations expired. The Supreme Court of Texas reversed the summary judgment in favor of the physician.)
Krueger v. Gol, 787 S.W.2d 138 (Tex. Ct. App. 1990). (A medical malpractice was action brought against a neurosurgeon alleging unnecessary back surgery. Summary judgment was granted to the physician by the lower court, based on a two-year statute of limitations for medical malpractice actions. The Court of Appeals ruled the plaintiff's affidavit raised an issue of material fact as to whether the timeliness of her discovery precluded summary judgment for the surgeon. The court held that strict enforcement of a two-year statute of limitations for a medical malpractice action violates the open courts provisions of the Texas Constitution when the patient does not have a reasonable opportunity to discover the wrong and bring suit within two years.)
Newberry v. Tarvin, 594 S.W.2d 204 (Tex. Ct. App. 1980). (A cause of action for the negligent insertion of an IUD which became lost in the plaintiff's body, necessitating surgery to locate and remove it, accrues when the plaintiff discovers or should have discovered her injury, not on the date when the device was implanted.)
Borderlon v. Peck, 661 S.W.2d 907 (Tex. 1983). (Statute providing a two-year limitation period for medical malpractice does not abolish fraudulent concealment as an equitable estoppel to the defense of the limitation of an action. The case involved the failure of a surgeon to inform the patient that he had left a broken needle in the patient's abdomen.)
Sanchez v. Memorial Medical Ctr. Hosp., 769 S.W.2d 656 (Tex. Ct. App. 1989). (The evidence failed to show that the defendant physician had fraudulently concealed the decedent's negligent treatment. Therefore, the two-year statute of limitations was not extended, and summary judgment in favor of the physician was affirmed.)