Health Care Law

The historical rule for hospitals is that they must act reasonably in their decisions to treat patients. Hospitals must acknowledge that a common practice of providing treatment to all emergency patients creates among members of a community an expectation that care will be provided whenever a person seeks care in an "unmistakable emergency." Seeking alternative care in a time-sensitive emergency situation could result in avoidable permanent injury or death, so it is not surprising that hospitals are held to a more flexible "reasonable duty" standard in their admission of patients for treatment.

Owing to the high cost of emergency room care, many private hospitals in the early 1980s began refusing to admit indigent patients and instead had them transferred to emergency rooms at municipal or county hospitals. This practice, known as patient dumping, has since been prohibited by various state statutes, and also by Congress as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) (Public Law No. 99-272), in a section titled Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) (§ 9121(b), codified at 42 U.S.C.A. § 1395dd). Under EMTALA, hospitals that receive federal assistance, maintain charitable nonprofit tax status, or participate in Medicare are prevented from denying emergency treatment based solely on an individual's inability to pay. EMTALA allowed private enforcement actions (i.e., lawsuits by individuals) and civil penalties (i.e., fines) for hospitals that violate its provisions. Patients who must receive medical treatment include people whose health is in "serious jeopardy" and pregnant women in active labor. The EMTALA duty to provide treatment may be relieved only if a patient is stabilized to the point where a transfer to another hospital will result in "no material deterioration of [his or her] condition."

The U.S. Supreme Court in Roberts v. Galen of Virginia, Inc., 525 U.S. 249, 119 S. Ct. 685, 142 L. Ed. 2d 648 (1999), ruled that patients who have an emergency medical condition who are transferred from a hospital before being stabilized may sue the hospital under the EMTALA. The Court interpreted EMTALA to allow any patient to sue under the stabilization requirement, even those who are not emergency room victims of patient dumping. Under the decision, a patient may recover if a hospital transfers the patient without stabilizing his or her condition, regardless of whether the doctor who signed the transfer order did so because the patient lacked HEALTH INSURANCE, or for any other improper purpose. Lower federal courts have conflicted over other aspects of the EMTALA, including whether the plaintiff must prove an improper motive when a hospital fails to screen an emergency patient. The high court has not resolved all of these conflicts.

Similar federal statutes require that hospitals treat all patients who have the ability to pay. Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin, by any program that receives federal financial assistance (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000d). Almost all hospitals receive this kind of funding, and many derive half or more of their revenue from Medicare or MEDIC-AID. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C.A. § 794) prohibits federally funded programs and activities (including hospitals that receive federal funds) from excluding any "otherwise handicapped individual … solely by reason of his handicap."

The broad definition of handicap is "physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of a person's major life activities." This has been construed to include ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS) and asymptomatic HIV. Thus, hospitals that receive federal aid may not deny treatment to patients who are HIV-positive or who have AIDS. At the state level, similar legislation protects access to all state-licensed health care facilities and to the services of treating physicians.