Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act
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Saint Leo University *
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302
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Medicine
Date
Feb 20, 2024
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docx
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Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act
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Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act
Tenisha Adams
Saint Leo University
HCA 302: Health Care Organization
Professor Telicia Ward-Thomas
January 21, 2024
Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act
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The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act was established in 1986 by Congress. This federal law gives the patient rights, preventing a hospital or medical facility from denying emergency medical treatment and having a patient leave or dumping them off to another
hospital. Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act is also known as EMTALA. "In the case of a hospital that has a hospital emergency department, if any individual comes to the emergency department and a request is made for examination or treatment for a medical condition, the hospital must provide an appropriate medical screening examination " (Zibulewsky, 2001). In the following case scenario, an individual went to the emergency room with a serious medical emergency and was transferred to another hospital when the individual could not provide their insurance card. We will discuss whether the hospital was right or wrong for the actions that it took. According to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, emergency rooms
must treat anyone with a medical emergency. The emergency department should do a medical screening examination to determine if there is a medical emergency. In this case, the emergency department did not follow those procedures, instead, they just dumped the individual off at another hospital. The emergency department was not following ethical and legal practice, which is especially important in healthcare. Delaying the individual from getting medical treatment could have caused serious harm and posed a major threat to the individual life or could have cost them their life. The emergency department did not know how severe the emergency was because they did not do a medical screening therefore, the emergency department was simply just dumping the individual off in another emergency room which is unethical.
Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act
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Overall, the emergency department should have done a medical screening on the individual regardless of whether they had insurance or not instead of transferring them to another
emergency department to get seen. Also, the emergency department put the hospital at risk of being sued or fined for not providing a screening.
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References
Understanding EMTALA. Home Page. (n.d.). https://www.acep.org/life-as-a-physician/ethics--legal/emtala/emtala-fact-sheet
Zibulewsky J. (2001). The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA): what it is and what it means for physicians. Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center), 14(4), 339–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/08998280.2001.11927785
Zuabi, N., Weiss, L. D., & Langdorf, M. I. (2016). Emergency medical treatment and labor act (EMTALA) 2002-15: review of office of inspector general patient dumping settlements. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 17(3), 245–251. https://doi.org/10.5811/westjem.2016.3.29705