EMTALA & The On-Call Physician

By Dana Spector, Associate Managing Editor, AHC Media

Individual physicians can be fined and excluded from participating in any federal program and their license revoked by the state medical board. CMS and the Office of Inspector General (OIG) suggest that hospitals provide EMTALA on-call training for their physicians who are on call. Is your hospital and doctor training up-to date?

The current CMS deficiency report found more than 2,600 EMTALA deficiencies, and 120+ of them were related to on-call physician issues. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have specific provisions related to insurers and EMTALA-covered patients. It is essential that every hospital and critical access hospital follow the federal law and CMS interpretive guidelines on EMTALA to guarantee uninterrupted reimbursements and avoid penalties.

AHC Media’s speaker, Sue Dill Calloway, will lead a new webinar: “Outpatient Services: Complying with the CMS Hospital CoPs” on January 11 to guide your team through the new updates. During this presentation, our expert will outline one of the most problematic standards for hospitals from CMS: Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) regulations concerning On-call Physicians, and so much more.

To learn more about this and to register, please click here.