EMTALA scenario analysis

EMTALA Scenario Analysis
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EMTALA Scenario Analysis
The Emergency Medical and Treatment Act (EMTALA) is a government law that ensures any patient going to an emergency department regardless of their financial status can be stabilized or treated. The law's underlying purpose was to guarantee patient’s access to emergency medical services and to forestall the act of patient unloading, wherein uninsured patients were moved, exclusively for budgetary reasons, from private to public clinics without thought of their medical status. Albeit just 4 pages long, EMTALA has made a tempest of debate since its implementation (Rosenbaum, 2013). The essay purposes to highlight the implementation of the EMTALA law while dealing with a transferred patient.
As the administrator of Hospital A, if I received a call from Hospital B, putting in a request for an EMTALA-qualified transfer and the intoxicated ENT physician at my hospital refuses to accept the transfer, while stating the patient does not need a higher level of medical care; rejecting the patient would be violating EMTALA. EMTALA requires all hospitals containing Emergency Departments (ED) to enforce certain principles of emergency care including screening the patients, stabilizing their conditions and in some cases transferring the unstable ones (Rosenbaum, 2013). By doing this, EMTALA assigns a legal duty to hospitals in regard to people who are not their patients. Screening and stabilization are the basic obligations provided by EMTALA. In regard to screening, the law compels all Medicare hospitals to attend to any individual who comes to the ED. Screening should be performed within the emergency department’s capabilities. In terms of stabilization, the law requires hospitals to provide the examination and treatment necessary to stabilize their affliction. Based on the above facts, it is apparent that rejecting the patient can have future legal repercussions on the hospital. My hospital clearly has an Emergency Department that can adequately attend to ENT cases thus having an obligation to screen and stabilize the patient with the severed ear. Additionally, federal laws define EMC as any medical condition that manifests itself through severe pain in such a way that, failure to receive medical attention could lead to serious dysfunction of bodily organs or jeopardize the health of an individual (Shah et al., 2020). That being said, failure to screen and stabilize the patient with the severed ear may eventually lead to the loss of the ear.
It would be my duty as an administrator to call in another ENT physician to attend to the patient. It is important to note that, a hospital can only transfer an unstable patient under limited circumstances. The circumstances may be; lack of medical personnel or lack of the required medical equipment. In this case, there are no grounds for transfer since the hospital has an Emergency Department and most importantly, an ENT section. Failure to abide by the EMTALA regulations may lead to civil penalties to the medical facility and the provider. Furthermore, although patients can only sue hospitals for not abiding by the EMTALA policy, medical practitioners who violate EMTALA may face malpractice char...