At issue in this medical negligence matter is the kind-for-kind specialty requirement embodied in the New Jersey Medical Care Access and Responsibility and Patients First Act (PFA), N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-37 to -42. This appeal requires the court to determine whether the affidavit of merit (AOM) of a board-certified hematology expert satisfied the PFA's equivalency requirement where neither defendant doctor specialized, nor was board certified, in hematology when they rendered care to the decedent. Instead, both defendants specialized in internal medicine at the time of the alleged treatment, and one was board certified in that specialty, but plaintiff's proffered expert did not specialize in internal medicine. The trial court denied defendants' motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint for failure to provide a sufficient AOM, essentially concluding the affiant's hematology subspecialty was "subsumed" in defendants' internal medicine specialty and, as such, the affiant was qualified to opine that defendants deviated from the standards of medical care by improperly prescribing heparin to the decedent.
The court granted defendants leave to appeal from the April 14, 2022 Law Division order. The court holds the PFA's kind-for-kind specialty requirement embodied in N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-41(a) is not satisfied when the AOM's affiant specialized in a subspecialty of the treating doctor's specialty but did not specialize, nor was board certified, in the physician's specialty when the alleged medical negligence occurred. The court therefore concludes plaintiff failed to satisfy the PFA's equivalency requirements and reverse the trial court's order denying defendants' dismissal motion. In doing so, the court rejects plaintiff's alternate argument that she satisfied the waiver exception to the PFA under N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-41(c), which would have rendered moot defendants' appeal.