A patient who goes to the emergency room, if conscious, is mostly concerned with getting care, not with untangling the contractual relationship between the hospital and the doctors who work there. And yet the characterization of the hospital-doctor relationship has profound implications for a patient’s ability to recover against the hospital for negligent treatment. This case asks us to decide when a hospital may be liable for the negligence of a doctor working in, but not as an employee of, a hospital in its emergency room.
In a recent post, https://www.videntpartners.com/blog/2023/medical-institutional-standard-care-and-liability-breach-independent-respondeat-superior, I discussed a case involving the death of a prisoner for lack of timely emergency treatment. Windhurst v.
The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires any hospital that participates in Medicare and provides emergency services to provide (1) an appropriate medical screening examination to anyone who comes to its emergency department asking for treatment, and (2) necessary stabilizing treatment or transfer to another medical facility if the examination reveals an emergency medical condition. Per the EMTALA regulations, this requirement applies not only to emergency departments, but also to any department where at least one-third of outpatient visits involve emergency c
