An EMTALA Primer

Over at NY Emergency Medicine. Go read it -- it's worth your time, especially if you are new to Emergency Medicine.

One thing that bothers me about the EMTALA case law and current enforcement, is that despite the theory that EMTALA was not supposed to be a surrogate for malpractice, the "overlap" between EMTALA enforcement and medical negligence has come to be near 100%, in effect creating a double jeopardy situation for ER docs. Though I have never seen or heard of a case in which a doc/hospital were subject to med mal and EMTALA fines, the possibility is disturbing.