The plaintiff hired an expert witness to review the case for EMTALA violations. The expert witness they hired was an Emergency Medicine physician who had been practicing EM for over 20 years, and had also published extensive research on chest pain.
One way to demonstrate an EMTALA violation is to show that the patient was given a substantially different workup or treatment than other patients presenting with the same complaint. The hospital was required to give the plaintiff the records for all ED patients presenting with triage nurse complaint of chest pain both 2 weeks before and after this patient’s death.
222 patients met the criteria for inclusion. 208 of these patients had a chest x-ray, and 14 did not. In the expert witness’ opinion, he addresses what happened with the remaining 14 patients.
The expert witness also reviewed the nurse triage protocol for patients with chest pain. Recall that this was an important part of the plaintiff’s approach to proving that a chest x-ray should have been obtained. While the expert witness felt that a chest x-ray should have been obtained based on review of the other patient’s charts, he did not feel that the triage order set proved that he should have gotten an x-ray.
The defense also hired an expert witness, who opined that there was not an EMTALA violation. Their witness is a professor of Emergency Medicine physician and chair of the Department. He had previously reviewed the case, but initially did not have the nursing triage policy. After reviewing this extra piece of information, he further clarified his opinion:
At this point, both sides had ample opportunity to depose the witnesses, hire expert witnesses and prepare their arguments.
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