a.    EMTALA: Emergency Medical Transfer and Labor Act: If a hospital sees a patient, it has a responsibility to the patient to make sure that he is stable before transferring him to another hospital.
(1)    Federal law that governs the transfer of patients from hospital to another.
(a)    Federal laws are supposed to apply to those hospitals who receive $ from the federal government.  But that isn’t always true.  St. Davids receives federal funds b/c takes care of medicaid patients–federal program.  Applies to St. Davids; there probably isn’t a hospital in the country that doesn’t receive federal funds.  EMTALA thus governs practically every hospital.

OCTOBER 4th:
(2)    EMTALA looks at three different issues:
(a)    Language of the law speaks to the screening of a patient who is brought to the ER.
(b)    Speaks to the stabilization of that patient
(c)    Speaks to the transfer of that patient.
b.    A woman was pregnant went into labor.  Her doctor was another hospital, but she was taken by the EMTs to the nearest hospital.  The nurse called the on-call doctor and the doctor of the receiving hospital, both of which agreed that she should be transferred to her own doctor.  On the way, the woman gave birth to the baby in the ambulance.  The baby was breeched and the umbilical cord got suppressed between the cervix and the head and the baby died.  Sued for wrongful death of the unborn baby.
c.    To recover on medical malpractice case, must establish:
(1)    legal duty requiring the physician to conform to a certain care or conduct
(2)    applicable standard of care and a breach of that care
(3)    injury
(4)    a reasonably close causal connection between the breach of the standard and the injury suffered by the plaintiff.
d.    HELD:  Physician-patient relationship must exist before a legal duty to the patient arises on the part of the physician.  The doctor didn’t see or examine her, but he was involved in creating a treatment plan, thus by implication, he is agreeing to take responsibility for implementing the plan, etc.  He made a medical decision as to whether she should be transferred.