Feds rarely punish hospitals for turning away pregnant patients

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Feds rarely punish hospitals for turning away pregnant patients

By AMANDA SEITZ
Updated 11:04 AM EDT, September 13, 2024

-snip-

The incident, government investigators concluded last year, was a violation of a federal law that requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients in medical distress before discharging or transferring them.

Yet, Our Lady of the Lake has never been been penalized for that incident or any of its other violations of the law. Few emergency rooms ever are.

Just a dozen hospitals have been fined for refusing to treat patients — pregnant or not — over the past two years, an Associated Press analysis of civil monetary penalties issued by the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General found. It took years for the government to decide those penalties.

Not one of the more than 100 emergency rooms that mistreated or turned away pregnant women since 2022, when the Biden administration pledged to toughen enforcement of the law, has been fined.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/hospitals-patient-dumping-pregnancies-6a0fa0a16a42e4ceb4c8c14c5cd2c0f5

[flying_wahini]

1. Biden needs to hold them accountable. Women have died and families destroyed.

[getagrip_already]

3. This is a doj decision....

Biden cant direct them to prosecute a specific entity.

He can only direct them in general terms, like we need to increase enforcement of a specific law.

How or if that is done is up to garland.

[cbabe]

2. Someone needs to act.

https://edition.cnn.com › 2024 › 09 › 12 › politics › joe-biden-violence-against-women-act

Biden spotlights 30th anniversary of Violence Against Women Act as his ...

1 day agoThe Violence Against Women Act, which Biden helped write and first introduced in 1990, is among the most