§ 1281.1.Request to Arbitrate Deemed Made Pursuant to Written Agreement

Title 9.1 sets up a separate arbitration scheme for medical malpractice claims, built around § 1299.4 rather than a conventional bilateral arbitration clause. This section bridges the two schemes. For purposes of this article, a request to arbitrate made under § 1299.4(a) counts as though it arose from a written agreement to arbitrate a controversy.

That fiction matters because it lets the enforcement tools in this article -- petitions to compel, stays of litigation, arbitrator appointment procedures -- apply to medical malpractice arbitration requests even though the underlying request doesn't look like the ordinary two-sided arbitration clause this article was built around.