Can a Prosecutor Obtain Hospital Blood Results Without a Warrant in a Michigan DUI Case?

Michigan hospital blood results can become evidence in a DUI case even when medical personnel drew the blood for treatment before the driver was arrested. Michigan’s statutory term is operating while intoxicated, or OWI, although most people search for this issue as DUI. The prosecutor’s ability to obtain the result depends on why the blood was drawn, what happened before the hospital transport, who requested the result, and precisely what the hospital disclosed.

The controlling Michigan Supreme Court decision remains People v. Perlos. It upheld the statutory procedure in 1990. More recent Fourth Amendment law creates a principled basis for challenging the statute as unconstitutional as applied to the warrantless acquisition of private medical information and for asking the Michigan Supreme Court to reconsider Perlos. But no controlling decision has displaced Perlos. A careful defense must therefore develop the constitutional challenge while also testing whether the prosecution satisfied the statute in the first place.

What Rule Applies to Hospital Blood Results in a Michigan DUI?

Michigan’s accident exception appears in MCL 257.625a(6)(e). If a driver involved in an accident is transported to a medical facility and blood is withdrawn at that time for medical treatment, the chemical-analysis result may be admitted in a civil or criminal case to show alcohol, a controlled substance, or another intoxicating substance in the person’s blood. The statute directs the medical facility or analyst to disclose the result to a prosecuting attorney who requests it for use in a criminal prosecution.¹

The government’s ability to obtain hospital blood results in a Michigan DUI therefore depends on whether each statutory condition has been satisfied.

The text does not require the prosecutor to give the patient advance notice or obtain a warrant, subpoena, court order, or pre-disclosure hearing when the statutory conditions are satisfied. It also does not require the driver to have been arrested before medical staff drew and tested the blood.

This procedure is distinct from Michigan’s implied-consent rules governing a chemical test requested by police. For a broader explanation of the testing methods and the different legal issues they create, see blood testing versus breath testing in Michigan OWI cases.

What Must Be True Before the Statute Applies?

The prosecution must establish facts that place the case within the exception. At minimum, the record should show:

1. A driver was involved in an accident.
2. The driver was transported to a medical facility after that accident.
3. A blood sample was withdrawn at that time for medical treatment.
4. Medical personnel ordered or performed the chemical analysis for treatment rather than at police direction.
5. A prosecuting attorney requested the chemical-analysis result for use in a criminal prosecution.

Each condition matters. A defense lawyer should obtain the prosecutor’s request, the hospital’s response, treatment records showing why testing was ordered, police reports, body-camera recordings, dispatch records, and communications among the hospital, police, and prosecutor. Those materials may show that the statutory pathway never opened or that the government obtained more than the statute permits.

Why Does People v. Perlos Permit Warrantless Disclosure?

In People v. Perlos, 436 Mich. 305, 328–31, 462 N.W.2d 310 (1990), drivers were taken to hospitals after accidents. Medical personnel ordered blood-alcohol testing for treatment, and prosecutors later obtained the results without warrants or the drivers’ consent.

The Michigan Supreme Court separated two events. First, a blood draw directed by the police is a government search. Second, a blood draw independently performed by medical personnel for treatment is ordinarily private conduct, so the Fourth Amendment does not regulate the medical draw itself. The Court then held that, in the statute’s narrowly defined circumstances, the driver did not have a Fourth Amendment privacy interest that prevented the prosecutor from acquiring the limited treatment-related test result.²

Perlos remains binding on Michigan trial courts. That practical point is important. A defense motion should not present the mere existence of medical privacy, standing alone, as though it has already displaced the Michigan Supreme Court’s holding.

Does Every Hospital Visit After a Driving Incident Qualify?

No. In People v. Keskimaki, 446 Mich. 240, 255–57, 521 N.W.2d 241 (1994), the defendant was found in a lawfully parked vehicle on the shoulder with the engine running. There was no collision, property damage, or apparent personal injury. The Michigan Supreme Court held that the event was not an “accident” within the statute and ordered suppression of the blood-test results on that statutory basis.³

Keskimaki directs courts to examine all surrounding circumstances. Relevant considerations include whether a collision occurred, whether anyone suffered injury, whether property was damaged, and whether the incident was unexpected or undesirable to a person directly involved. A vehicle in an unusual location does not necessarily establish an accident.

Can a Prosecutor’s Letter Be Enough to Obtain the Result?

A prosecutor’s letter may be sufficient when the underlying facts fit the statute. In People v. Barton, No. 369926, slip op. at 5–9 (Mich. Ct. App. Oct. 11, 2024) (unpublished), a prosecutor sent a letter to an Ohio hospital two days after a Michigan crash and requested the defendant’s chemical-analysis results. The hospital sent the results to the investigating police department at the prosecutor’s direction.

The Court of Appeals concluded that the prosecutor made the request required by the statute and that delivery to the investigating officer did not justify suppression. It further reasoned that a merely technical statutory violation would not automatically trigger the exclusionary rule. Because Barton is unpublished, it is not binding precedent under Michigan Court Rule 7.215(C)(1). It nevertheless shows how prosecutors are likely to use Perlos and how a court may treat the route by which the result reaches law enforcement.⁴

The request still deserves close examination. Counsel should determine who authorized it, what it demanded, which statute it invoked, what the hospital produced, and whether the response included urine results, narrative records, or other information beyond the blood chemical-analysis result.

Does the Accident Exception Open the Entire Hospital Chart?

No. Perlos described the statute as a carefully limited exception to Michigan’s physician-patient privilege. It permits access to the chemical-analysis result under the specified circumstances. It does not authorize unrestricted acquisition of emergency-room notes, diagnoses, medication records, unrelated laboratory studies, imaging, mental-health information, or the physical blood sample for government testing.

This limit creates two separate questions in many cases. Did the prosecutor lawfully obtain the treatment-related alcohol or drug result? Did the government also obtain broader medical information for which it needed a different legal basis? A proper analysis must identify exactly what the request sought and what the hospital released.

Can Hospital Blood Results in a Michigan DUI Be Constitutionally Challenged?

Possibly, but this would require that Perlos be overturned, and this would be best on the case of Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296, 309–17 (2018), which held that the government generally conducts a search when it acquires extensive historical cell-site location records. The Supreme Court rejected a mechanical application of the traditional third-party doctrine. The fact that information is held by a third party does not, by itself, defeat a claim to Fourth Amendment protection.⁵

That reasoning matters because Perlos relied directly on United States v. Miller, the bank-records case associated with the third-party doctrine. The bank records in Miller were commercial documents voluntarily exposed to bank employees in ordinary transactions. Perlos extended that rationale to emergency medical blood results, reasoning that information provided to a hospital for a limited purpose could be conveyed to the government even though the patient expected it to remain confidential.

Carpenter identified two features of the third-party doctrine that are important here: the nature of the information and whether its disclosure was meaningfully voluntary. Cell-site data was not truly “shared” in the ordinary sense because it was generated automatically through technology that had become indispensable to modern life. The Court concluded that the user had not meaningfully assumed the risk of turning over a comprehensive record of his movements.

That voluntariness analysis may apply with particular force to emergency medical care. A crash patient may be unconscious, seriously injured, medicated, or in urgent need of treatment. The patient does not enter a commercial transaction or affirmatively choose to create evidence for law enforcement. Blood is taken so clinicians can diagnose, medicate, and treat the patient. In many cases, declining the draw is not a realistic choice at all. If routine cell-phone operation was not meaningfully voluntary in Carpenter, the defense can argue that disclosure of treatment blood under emergency conditions is even less voluntary.

The argument may be framed as an as-applied challenge to the statute’s use in the particular case. Its strength may increase when the patient was unconscious or incapable of consent, when the government lacked individualized probable cause, when the request swept beyond the limited chemical-analysis result, or when police participation blurred the line between treatment and evidence gathering. Those facts bear directly on privacy, voluntariness, state action, and reasonableness.

There is an important limitation. Carpenter was expressly narrow. It concerned an exhaustive digital chronicle of a person’s movements, not one hospital blood result, and the Court said it did not disturb Miller generally. A court defending Perlos can emphasize that the Michigan statute reaches only a limited result after a qualifying accident rather than a broad medical history. Thus, Carpenter does not establish that Michigan prosecutors now need warrants for qualifying hospital blood results. It supplies a doctrinal basis for challenging the older assumption that third-party possession and a legislative disclosure command necessarily eliminate Fourth Amendment protection.

The unpublished Barton panel acknowledged that later judicial decisions might warrant reexamination of Perlos, but recognized that only the Michigan Supreme Court can overrule or modify its precedent. A trial-level motion should candidly acknowledge that obstacle, build the factual record supporting the as-applied challenge, distinguish emergency medical information from the commercial records discussed in Miller, and preserve the constitutional issue for Michigan Supreme Court or federal review.

Are Hospital Blood Results Scientifically Equivalent to Police Blood Tests?

Not necessarily. Hospital testing is designed to inform treatment, while a forensic blood test is designed to generate evidence under laboratory protocols. Hospitals may test serum or plasma rather than whole blood.

Because serum and plasma contain proportionally more water, their alcohol concentrations are ordinarily higher than the corresponding whole-blood concentration used in Michigan’s statutory limits. When properly defended, hospital blood results in a Michigan DUI must also be evaluated scientifically by an independent defense expert, because medical testing and forensic testing serve different purposes.

Legal acquisition and scientific meaning are separate issues. Even when the prosecutor obtained the hospital result under MCL 257.625a(6)(e), the defense should examine the specimen type, testing method, units, collection time, hospital reference ranges, and any conversion used to express the result as whole-blood alcohol concentration. The firm’s main resource on the reliability of DUI blood testing in Michigan explains these scientific issues in greater detail.

How Can a Defendant Obtain Hospital Blood Results?

A patient may request records directly from the hospital through its medical-records or health-information department. Once a criminal case begins, defense counsel should also request the result and related government records through discovery. Those materials should include the prosecutor’s request letter, the hospital’s transmittal, police receipt and chain-of-custody records, and any broader medical material in the prosecution’s possession.

The defense should not stop with the one-page result. The meaning and admissibility of a hospital number may depend on the medical order, specimen type, analytical method, collection time, and communications leading to disclosure. If the government later arranged forensic testing of a separate sample, counsel may also need the laboratory’s underlying data. This article on gas chromatography and the raw data behind a DUI blood test explains why a final report is often only the beginning of the scientific review.

Attorney Insight: What Should Be Investigated First?

Hospital blood results in a Michigan DUI are often treated as though they present only one issue: whether the reported number exceeds the legal limit. In practice, they contain at least three different layers. The government must have a lawful route to the information, the evidence must fit the rules governing admissibility, and the hospital result must be interpreted scientifically before it can be compared with a Michigan whole-blood threshold.

At Barone Defense Firm, the initial inquiry is therefore documentary. The request letter, treatment order, hospital response, complete test report, specimen information, and police communications can reveal whether the draw was truly medical, whether the accident exception applies, whether the government exceeded that exception, and whether the number means what the prosecution claims.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hospital Blood Results in a Michigan DUI

Does HIPAA prevent a prosecutor from obtaining my hospital blood result?

HIPAA does not create an absolute bar against disclosure. It permits disclosures required by law, and MCL 257.625a(6)(e) directs disclosure of qualifying chemical-analysis results to a requesting prosecutor. The critical questions remain whether the statutory requirements were met and whether the disclosure exceeded the narrow information the statute covers.

Must police arrest me before the hospital draws blood?

No. When medical personnel independently draw and analyze blood for treatment after a qualifying accident, the statute does not require a prior arrest. A police-directed evidentiary draw presents a different Fourth Amendment question.

Can police obtain all of my medical records under the accident exception?

No. The accident exception addresses the results of the chemical analysis of the treatment blood. It is not a general authorization to obtain the entire medical chart or the blood sample for discretionary testing.

Will a statutory violation automatically suppress the hospital result?

Not necessarily. Suppression depends on the nature of the violation and whether it is constitutional rather than merely technical. The unpublished Barton decision concluded that a technical issue involving delivery of the result to police at the prosecutor’s direction did not justify exclusion.

Is DUI different from OWI in Michigan?

Michigan statutes use OWI, or operating while intoxicated. DUI is the more familiar public term. This explanation of the difference between DUI and OWI in Michigan addresses the terminology and Michigan charge structure.

This article provides general information about Michigan DUI and OWI law. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. The law and the application of legal rules depend on the facts of each case.