ED Legal Letter – July 1, 2011

July 1, 2011

• Jury Awards Woman $200,000 After Hospital ED Sends Her Home to Deliver Her Dead 16-Week-Old Fetus

  After a controversial court opinion and a highly charged emotional trial, a federal jury in Maine awarded Lorraine Morin $50,000 in compensatory damages and $150,000 in punitive damages against Eastern Maine Medical Center (EMMC) for failure to stabilize her prior to discharging her from the emergency department (ED) after a second-trimester miscarriage.

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• Can a Family Sue if You Allege Abuse Is Occurring, and It's Not?

  When an emergency physician (EP) reported suspected child abuse, he inadvertently gave the wrong family's information to the authorities, and the child was removed from the home. If you were the EP in question, would you expect to be on the receiving end of a lawsuit?

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• Know Legal Requirements for Abuse Reporting

  All members of the ED staff, including physicians, residents, interns, and nurses, are mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect, says Robert D. Kreisman, a medical malpractice attorney with Kreisman Law Offices in Chicago.

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• Privacy vs. EP Duty to Report Could Be Focus of Lawsuit

  Very little literature or case law exists to shed light on the circumstances that might result in litigation against health care providers for allegedly making false reports of suspected abuse of adult ED patients, according to Edward Monico, MD, JD, assistant professor in the department of emergency medicine at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT.

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• Nurses' Notes Conflict With EP's? Don't Let It Go Unacknowledged

  Does the EP's charting indicate that a patient was discharged home, while an ED nurse's documentation states, "The patient looks very sick and I don't think he should be discharged," go unacknowledged without any additional explanation?

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