The provision of healthcare services to patients is governed by both ethical and legal principles to ensure that quality and safe care is provided. Despite their compromised health statuses, patients have the right to receive the quality care that meets the required standards by both federal and state laws. The healthcare provider plays two critical roles during the process of care delivery; advocates of patient rights and implementers of treatment plans and actions. There are situations where healthcare providers fail to meet their legal obligations of providing standard and safe care to patients. This paper, therefore, focuses on delayed treatment, legal requirements of healthcare providers and consequences of non-compliance, federal laws and statutes regarding this issue, and, management strategies to ensure that patient rights have been complied with during care delivery.
Failure to treat the patient on time
Failure to treat patients promptly can arise due to many factors in a healthcare setting. It can be due to individual professional factors or organizational factors. Individual occupational factors include lack of competence leading to wrong diagnosis or, negligence to initiate interventions. Organizational factors are responsible for the delayed treatment of limited patient resources such as equipment, personnel or supplies including drugs, and protocols such as payment of fees before treatment (Graban, 2016). All these factors may result in a delayed process of care delivered which in turn lead to poor health outcomes for the patient. This is against both federal and state public health laws and statutes regarding the delivery of health care services by medical professionals. These laws and ordinances have clearly outlined the obligations of healthcare institutions and professionals, and standards of care that are expected during practice.
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Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (1986).
This is a federal law that was enacted by American Congress in 1986 with aims of improving the quality of emergency care for patients without enough funds or insurance to pay for emergency care such as accident or labor process. This law is under the Public Health Laws and Welfare, Chapter 7; Social Security, Section (b) (1) (A) (Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) Resource, n.d). This federal law states that all patients in emergency care centers should have their treatment initiated immediately regardless of the age, gender, financial status, race or any other factor that may lead to a delayed treatment process. This law was introduced after cases of many patients reported to have died on the way to other facilities have after being referred to without being stabilized by healthcare workers in the emergency department. The law interprets delayed treatment in emergency healthcare centers and departments because of social and economic factors as criminal offenses. Medical professionals are obliged to provide timely and standard care to all patients to avoid medical-legal issues.
Legal obligations to meet patient rights
According to both federal and state laws delaying treatment of patients amount negligence and attracts legal penalties for the healthcare professional responsible for the intended care. Therefore, healthcare organizations have to meet all legal obligations during care to promote the rights of patients. Several legal requirements exist to be upheld. One of the legal needs of the healthcare organizations and professionals is the duty to care (Hall et al., 2016). This means that the primary role of institutions of care is to provide care services to the patients to promote and restore health regardless of their sociodemographic factors. This is according to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986.
The second legal obligations of healthcare institutions and medical professionals are to provide a standard quality of care. Standard care is the one that meets all the requirements both legally and ethically. Factors that promote timely initiation of treatment include professional competence and justice (Hall et al., 2016). The proficiency enables care providers to make a correct diagnosis and plan for care which increases the rate of intervention such as treatment. Patient has a right to safe and quality care which can only be provided by competent healthcare providers (Graban, 2016). If an individual or organization feel not in a position to provide quality care, they should first stabilize the patient and then transfer the patient to institutions with expert professionals and equipment. This also is provided by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986.
Consequences of non-compliance to legal obligations in healthcare
Delaying treatment by healthcare providers and institutions have significant legal implications that can affect future service delivery of both parties. For individual professional, they risk losing their rights and freedom of healthcare practice due to criminal charges for negligence (Gostin, & Wiley, 2016). For a healthcare organization, this might lead to civil issues due to the poor reputation as reported by patients or clients that were cared for by such institutions. Therefore, in general, failure to meet obligations for patient rights can result in an operational breakdown in some institutions.
If individuals are found to have been responsible for the delayed treatment of patients, they would have failed to meet the legal obligation that calls them to provide care for the people using their skills and knowledge. As a result of this failure, they risk being stripped off the rights and freedom of health care practice (Gostin, & Wiley, 2016). This also can be accompanied by imprisonment dependent on healthcare outcomes such as disability and death. An example such includes the case of Dr. David Sellu, a British consultant and surgeon who was charged with manslaughter for delaying a surgical treatment of his patient which eventually resulted in death. After appearing in court several times, Dr. Sellu was found guilty and was sentenced to two and half year jail term (Surgeon jailed for manslaughter after postponing surgery on a man with perforated bowel, 2013, November 7)
Incompetence in healthcare can result in reduced standards of care such as wrong diagnosis and wrong plan of care which at the result in a delayed process of delivering treatment to the patient. Such can result in disease complication causing even deaths of patients. In the event of such situations, one can be charged with involuntary manslaughter which attracts penalties of termination of one’s practice of license (Brazier, & Cave, 2016). An example of this kind of issue is the case involving a nurse from Pennsylvania, Christian Gainey who was charged for the death of Herbert McMaster. The nurse was charged with failing to perform a comprehensive assessment of his patient who later died. Her practice license was terminated with immediate effect (Veronica Stracqualursi, 2018, May 10).
Management actions to promote organizational compliance to obligation and patients’ rights.
Institutions can implement strategies that will ensure that all legal obligations and patient’s rights are adhered by every healthcare professional. One of the policy is to ensure that there are adequate resources to provide the necessary care according to the needs of the patients (Graban, 2016). This should be done since factors such as limited personnel and drugs delay interventions in a situation with a large number of patients. Proper staffing ratios should be implemented. Another strategy to promote adherence to legal obligation is continuous medical-legal education to ensure that all care providers understand their roles and the consequences of breaching the rules and standards of practice (Duffy, 2018). The third strategy to provide safe and quality care is promoted according to the ethical and legal requirement is by introducing and competitive and comprehensive recruitment process (Graban, 2016). This will enable the organizations to employ only those with a high level of competence in providing care to the patients.
Healthcare providers have a duty of providing quality and safe care services to patients as well as protecting the rights of these group of clients. This according to the laws and regulations governing the delivery of healthcare services to the people of America. Patients are dying from complications of delayed treatment amount to severe legal implications for healthcare institutions and professionals. These two parties are therefore tasked with the responsibilities of ensuring that deaths and complications from such preventable events are avoided at all costs. It is also the responsibility of leadership and management to promote a workplace environment that ensures that the rights of the patients have been respected as required by the public health laws.
References
Brazier, M., & Cave, E. (2016). Medicine, patients and the law. Oxford University Press.
Duffy, J. R. (2018). Quality Caring in Nursing and Health Professions: Implications for Clinicians, Educators, and Leaders. Springer Publishing Company.
Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) Resource. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://library.ahima.org/doc?oid=76003#.XEHW_1wzbIU
Gostin, L. O., & Wiley, L. F. (2016). Public health law: power, duty, restraint. Univ of California Press.
Graban, M. (2016). Lean hospitals: improving quality, patient safety, and employee engagement. CRC press.
Hall, M. A., Orentlicher, D., Bobinski, M. A., Bagley, N., & Cohen, I. G. (2018). Health care law and ethics. Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.
Surgeon jailed for manslaughter after postponing surgery on man with perforated bowel. (2013, November 7). Retrieved from https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f6722
Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN. (2018, May 10). Nurse charged in death of H.R. McMaster's father. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/10/us/hr-mcmaster-death-nurse- charge/index.html
