November 29, 2018 – The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) guarantees a certain level of medical care to anyone who involves an emergency department that accepts Medicare or Medicaid payments.
Some maternity wards and psychiatric hospitals are also subject to EMTALA.
Under the 1986 Act, emergency departments must:
1. Provide patients with timely and appropriate medical check-up.
- This assessment is different from triage, during which a nurse or other healthcare skilled measures vital signs to find out the order during which patients ought to be examined.
- Unlike triage, medical screening should be performed by a healthcare skilled with specific expertise—often a physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant.
- Medical screening tests are performed to find out the reason behind a patient's symptoms and must not be delayed or denied to find out the patient's ability to pay.
- During preventive medical examinations, all relevant hospital resources should be used, corresponding to laboratory tests or CT scans.
The commonest EMTALA violation by hospitals over the past decade has been failure to offer adequate medical screening.
2. Stabilize Patients with a medical emergency.
Failure to offer stabilizing treatment was the fourth commonest violation of the EMTALA law over the past decade.
3. If a hospital cannot stabilize a patient, it’s obliged to corresponding transfer to a different facility, including:
- Treatment to scale back transmission risks
- Obtaining the consent of the receiving hospital to simply accept the transfer
- Ensuring transfer with qualified personnel and technique of transport (ambulance)
Failure to perform a correct transfer was the second commonest hospital violation of EMTALA over the past decade.
4. Maintain appropriate patient records, including a Central Protocol about who got here to the emergency room and what happened to them.
Failure to keep up this log has been the third commonest EMTALA violation over the past decade.
5. Put up signs within the emergency room to tell people about these rights.
6. Keep an inventory of Doctors on call who can examine patients in an emergency.
7. Accept corresponding transfers from other hospitals if the receiving facility has special skills or is capable of look after an admitted patient.
8. Do not penalize any hospital worker who reports a violation.
9. Report all wrongfully transferred patients who’re admitted inside 72 hours.