EMTALA: Court Dismisses Suit Against Nurse.
A patient sued the hospital and the nurse practitioner who saw her in the emergency department, claiming a violation of the US Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The patient claimed she was denied the appropriate emergency medical screening examination that is every emergency patient’s right in every US hospital emergency room.
The US District Court for the Eastern District of California saw three flaws in the patient’s legal case.
The hospital’s records showed she was in fact triaged by the nurse practitioner within forty minutes of arrival. Her wait was not the four hours she claimed in her lawsuit had elapsed before she was seen.
The nurse testified the patient got up and left the hospital right in the middle of her examination. According to the Court, that alone precluded the need for any further consideration of her legal case.
The third ground for dismissal of the patient’s lawsuit against the nurse practitioner was that only physicians and hospitals, not nurses, can be held liable in a patient’s civil suit under the EMTALA. Nevertheless a hospital can be sued as an emergency department nurse’s employer for what the nurse did or failed to do. A nurse can be sued for negligence in the emergency department, if that is an issue in the case.
Genthner v. Nurse, 2016 WL 7178600 (E.D. Cal., December 8, 2016).