Fixing EMTALA: what's wrong with the Patient Transfer Act.
Congress primarily enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) in 1986 to prevent the denial of care to uninsured patients in emergency departments. The final version of EMTALA lacks specific protection for indigent patients and saddles hospitals and physicians with more liability than Congress initially intended. Loopholes in the law allow denial of care to patients when temporarily stabilized. Congress should ameliorate these problems through amendment of the law.
Weiss
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LD
Section of Emergency Medicine, Louisiana State University School of Medicine, New Orleans 70112, USA.
Martinez
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JA
D004638:Emergency Treatment; D010360:Patient Transfer / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D011050:Policy Making; D016079:Refusal to Treat; D014481:United States