Two Midwest hospitals are under federal investigation for potentially violating the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) by allegedly failing to offer appropriate obstetric emergency care.
On Monday, CMS announced investigations into the unnamed hospitals’ failures to “offer necessary stabilizing care to an individual experiencing an emergency medical condition” per EMTALA, according to an HHS statement.
The facilities in question are Freeman Hospital West in Joplin, Missouri, and the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). The Washington-based NWLC is representing the patient, Mylissa Farmer.
“Last August, Ms. Farmer experienced preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM) at approximately 18 weeks of pregnancy,” the NWLC said in a statement. “This was a medical emergency, putting her at risk of severe blood loss, sepsis, or death. But she was denied the emergency care she needed — an abortion — by Freeman Hospital West in Joplin, Missouri, and the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, Kansas.”
Farmer filed an EMTALA complaint with CMS in November that detailed the devastation she experienced as a result of the mistreatment she said she endured. The complaint stated, in part, that she continues to think of other women who are “being forced to go through what she went through,” and that she has “lost faith in the medical providers in her community.”
On Monday, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra referenced the critical nature of emergency care in public remarks on the investigations.
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