ED Legal Letter – May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013
View Issues
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An Ambulance ‘Owned’ by a Hospital Must Also Be ‘Operated’ by the Hospital to Trigger EMTALA Obligations
Whenever an individual enters an ambulance (or medical helicopter) owned and operated by a hospital, the federal government deems the person to have come to the hospitals emergency department for purposes of triggering the hospitals obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).1 -
No Specialist Available? Protect Yourself Legally
Not surprisingly, if a consultant is unavailable and a bad outcome occurs, the emergency physician (EP) is potentially a defendant in any subsequent medical malpractice lawsuit, says Damian D. Capozzola, JD, an attorney with Crowell & Moring, LLP, in Los Angeles, CA. -
Mitigate Legal Risks of ED "Bounce Backs"
Lab work was ordered for a patient who presented to an ED after having experienced her first seizure, but it wasnt reviewed until after the patient was discharged. -
Was ED Patient Recently Hospitalized? Reduce Risks
Forty percent of hospital readmissions within 30 days come through the ED, according to an analysis of data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project state inpatient and ED databases on 4,028,555 patients discharged from acute care hospitals in California, Florida, and Nebraska between July 1, 2008, and September 31, 2009.1 -
Does Accessing Database Help or Hurt EPs Legally?
If an emergency physician (EP) decided not to prescribe opioids for a patient after learning from a prescription drug monitoring database that the patient had just received a two-week prescription for the same medication from another provider, could the EP be successfully sued for failure to treat?