How do I sue under EMTALA?

Emergency rooms in hospitals see many patients each day, some of whom are more severely injured than others. Despite their conditions, the doctors and nurses are charged with must care and stabilize all those who enter their facility. And they must perform this duty to everyone regardless of whether they have the means to pay for the care or not.

There are times when medical staff violate their responsibilities and attempt to move the patients out to other facilities before they are stable or ready. When this occurs the medical professional, as well as the hospital/facility at which he works is liable for this negligence and the results his/her negligence has on a patient. Should injury of some sort result, the patient can sue the hospital for an EMTALA violation.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Leave Act (EMTALA) protects those who are treated or mistreated in an emergency facility. EMTALA lawyers can better counsel you on what steps to take if you feel that negligence in an emergency facility has resulted in injury to you or someone for whom you are responsible.

The law provides the following:

• Emergency room personnel must be sure that a patient is completely stabilized before transferring her to any other care facility, and they prohibited from denying medical care to anyone for any reason, including their inability to pay for services.
• EMTALA law developed out of prior incidents where care was withheld because of a patient's inability to pay for services.
• When medical professionals violate this law, the hospital or facility where they work can also be sued for damages the patient incurs from the medical professional's poor decision.
• When a patient is not completely stabilized prior to being transferred to another hospital or nursing facility and because of this negligence develops an infection they wouldn't have normally developed should they have received proper care to begin with, there are potential grounds for a malpractice lawsuit against that facility according to the EMTALA laws.

In order to sue under EMTALA the first thing you need to do is hire an EMTALA lawyer willing to work on a contingency basis and accept his final fee once the case is finalized. Next, bring all hospital records you can to the lawyer and let him begin building the case form this evidence. It is not necessary to have hard proof when there is a violation of EMTALA. Just move ahead under the premise that injury resulted due to negligence on the part of the emergency room staff, assuming this is the case, and your attorney should be able to move the case forward from there.