The enduring role of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) is a seminal law that imposes screening, stabilization, and transfer duties on all Medicare-participating hospitals that have emergency departments. More than twenty-five years after its enactment, EMTALA continues to generate controversy over the scope and depth of its obligations on issues ranging from the nature of the screening obligation and rules regarding on-call specialists to whether EMTALA's stabilization protections exclude emergency inpatients. Despite ongoing questions that flow from its detailed provisions, EMTALA is an enduring testament to society's evolving views that hospitals must provide emergency care not only to their established patients but to the broader communities they serve.