Morales v. Palomar Health — Oct. 2016 (Summary)

EMTALA

Morales v. Palomar Health
Case No. 3:14-cv-0164-GPC-MDD (S.D. Cal. Oct. 20, 2016)

The United States District Court for the Southern District of California granted a hospital’s partial motion for summary judgment, denying a patient’s claim of inadequate screening under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (“EMTALA”).

A patient brought a claim of inadequate screening under EMTALA.  The patient had the burden of proving that the hospital breached its duties under EMTALA by “treating a patient differently than other patients presenting similar issues, or by conducting a screening examination so lacking as to support the conclusion that it was not designed to identify acute and severe symptoms.” The patient’s claim of inadequate screening focuses on the second way in which the hospital could have breached its duties under EMTALA.  Whether or not a screening is lacking or inappropriate depends on whether the examination was designed to identify acute and severe symptoms that alert physicians to the need for immediate medical attention.

In order to demonstrate that the patient’s screening was appropriate, the hospital provided the court with a copy of its EMTALA Policy and an expert report opining on the sufficiency of that policy.  The expert concluded that the hospital adequately designed a medical screening procedure to identify emergency medical conditions and that its staff had followed those procedures in the course of treating the patient.  The patient then failed to present any evidence in support of his argument that the hospital’s treatment was insufficient under EMTALA.  Because the patient offered no evidence to support his claim, nor did he make a single argument against the hospital’s policy for identifying emergency medical conditions, the hospital was entitled to partial summary judgment.