Under federal law, hospitals are strictly prohibited from denying emergency services to patients. In one of the three cases, state officials found Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River failed to deliver necessary medical treatment before transferring a patient to another healthcare facility. The patient, who was “unstable and in respiratory distress,” died during the transfer.
State officials also discovered an on-call surgeon at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester refused to perform an emergency operation on a patient who came to the hospital with flesh-eating bacteria. The patient was transferred to another healthcare facility, and the surgeon is no longer permitted to operate at St. Vincent. In the third case, healthcare providers at Lahey Clinic in Burlington summarily “banned” a patient from its emergency room in November.
CMS did not strip the hospitals of their Medicare status since all three organizations implemented corrective action plans.
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