Singularity Health Law Blog

PATIENT ABILITY TO PAY - A MEDICAL CONSIDERATION IN STANDARD OF CARE?

In Murray v. UNMC Physicians, Neb.. No. S-10-455, (9/16/11), the Plaintiff’s wife, Ann Murray suffered from pulmonary arterial hypertension, a chornic constriction of the blood vessels in the lungs which pressures the heart, ultimately leading to death.  Flolan (epoprostenol sodium), is a very expensive drug that is effective in the direct vasodilation of pulmonary and systemic arterial vascular vessels. 

 

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WITH KIDNEY DISEASE HOT POTATO IN ATLANTA

The New York Times reported to day that a number of illegal immigrants who were receiving free care at at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta had become a bone of contention between Grady and a Fresenius Medical Care Dialysis Clinic there, with Frensius foregoing further treatment and advising patients to wait until they were in serious condition in order to force Grady’s emergency room to take them under EMTALA.  

EMTALA INCLUDES PROTECTION FOR WOMEN WITH DEAD FETUS

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act  (“EMTALA”), 42 U.S.C. Section 1395 dd, protects women with dead fetuses as well as those with live fetuses according to John A. Woodcock, Jr., Chief United States District Court Judge in Morin v. Eastern Maine Medical Center, 1:09-cv-00258 in his recent Order On Motion For Order Granting Equitable Relief and On Reneewed Motion for Judgment As a Matter of Law.  His motion denied the Eastern Maine Medical Center’s motion for post judgement relief from a jury finding last October that a jury erred in awarding $50,000 in compensatory damages and $150, 000 in punitive damages to a women who was sent home from the hospital with a dead fetus after she appeared in the hospital’s ER seeking help.