Navigating EMTALA Rules
Compliance Perspectives: Healthcare Compliance at the Border
Since the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (Dobbs), hospitals and their emergency department (ED) clinicians in some states have faced significant uncertainty about their...more
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has rescinded its 2022 guidance and accompanying letter that reinforced hospitals' obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) to provide...more
I. Key Takeaways - Federal enforcement under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) may be changing after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rescinded guidance issued under the Biden...more
Below is Alston & Bird’s Health Care Week in Review, which provides a synopsis of the latest news in health care regulations, notices, and guidance; federal legislation and congressional committee action; reports, studies,...more
An Idaho federal court has resolved the tension between that state’s restrictive abortion law and the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) in favor of a hospital system’s obligation to stabilize pregnant...more
Iowa’s fetal heartbeat law, House File 732, which was signed into law by Governor Kim Reynolds in 2023, will go into effect on Monday, July 29. The law has been temporarily enjoined from enforcement since last July, however a...more
On June 27, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Idaho v. United States on procedural grounds and sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit. By doing so, the Supreme Court reinstated the preliminary injunction issued by the...more
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in the consolidated cases of Moyle v. United States, Case No. 23-726 and Idaho v. United States, Case No. 23-727. These cases asked the justices to consider whether the...more
On April 17, 2023, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to modify the Standards for Privacy for Individually Identifiable...more
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (Proposed Rule) on April 12, 2023, proposing amendments to the Health Insurance Portability and...more
As states enact and enforce various laws restricting, prohibiting, and even criminalizing abortion and other reproductive health care services, HIPAA rules that allow disclosure of patient information become potential privacy...more
On 10 March 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (the DOJ) appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals an amended final decision by the Northern District of Texas (the Texas District Court) that struck down U.S. Department...more
In recent months, decisions and laws limiting abortion rights in the United States have forced health care providers that serve pregnant women to keep abreast of quickly changing legal restrictions affecting their...more
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals with emergency departments and participating in Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) programs to provide medical screening, treatment and...more
Federal litigation was in the spotlight last week with two major decisions related to the Biden-Harris administration’s Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) guidance on providing abortion services as emergency...more
In eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion, the United States Supreme Court’s July 24, 2022 decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, returned the question of abortion regulation to the “people...more
The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization represents a sea-change in Constitutional law that has already impacted our country in multiple ways. By overruling Roe v. Wade (1973)...more
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, one federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), has become a focal point in the Biden administration’s efforts to challenge state attempts to restrict...more
The weeks after the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision have seen an array of federal and state actions on the issue of access to abortion-related services, including new...more
On July 11, 2022, United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, issued a letter to hospitals stating that the Federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires physicians and...more
The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (“Secretary”) issued a letter to healthcare providers ("Letter") and associated guidance on July 11, 2022, reminding applicable providers of their EMTALA...more
Since the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the Court determined that the authority to regulate abortion rests with the political branches, i.e. legislatures, and not the courts,...more