Colon-Ramos v. Clinica Santa Rosa, Inc. (Summary)

EMTALA

Colon-Ramos v. Clinica Santa Rosa, Inc., No. 12-1222 (JAF) (D. P.R. Apr. 10, 2013)

The United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico granted a motion to dismiss an EMTALA suit brought against a hospital and others, including individual physicians and an insurance company, by the daughters of a patient who died after being examined in the hospital’s emergency room.  The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (“EMTALA”) by failing to detect the patient’s acute coronary syndrome.  In granting the motion to dismiss, the court stated that “the clinic may have committed malpractice by failing to uncover an emergency condition, but such a failure to diagnose” does not violate EMTALA.  The court also noted that the non-hospital defendants could not be liable under EMTALA because EMTALA only applies to hospitals.  Lastly, the court noted that “[i]t is generally accepted that doctors are not liable under EMTALA.”