CMS Cites Baltimore Hospital for Abandoning Patient in January

The hospital came under fire after a bystander filmed the incident as the woman was left by security guards at a bus stop on a cold night. 

This article was originally published by Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare (PSQH) March 21, 2018.

A Baltimore hospital was cited by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in a report released this week for removing a mentally ill patient from its emergency room in January and leaving her at a bus stop wearing just a hospital gown.

The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) was cited for failing to comply with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), as The Washington Post reported. The hospital came under fire after a bystander filmed the incident as the woman was left by security guards at a bus stop on a cold night.

According to the Post, the patient was admitted to the hospital earlier that day after a fall from a motorized bike. She was cleared for discharge, but resisted and refused to dress, the report said. Security then dropped the patient off at a nearby bus stop, where the man who filmed the incident called for an ambulance.

The woman was brought back to the hospital and then taken to a homeless shelter in a taxi without an exam, and it was not registered that she returned to the facility, the Post reports.

According to the Baltimore Sun, CMS found that UMMC violated a federal law that hospitals must protect and promote each patient’s rights. The hospital also was found to have violated the woman’s right to receive care in a safe setting, to be free from all forms of abuse or harassment, and her right to confidentiality of records because non-clinical staff were given access to or made aware of part of the patient’s medical history. CMS also found that UMMC failed to meet data collection and analysis standards and failed to perform quality improvement activities.

The Sun reports that the hospital has now begun to record every time patients visit the ER. It also conducts audits of the patient log each month, provides additional staff training on federal requirements, and keeps ER doors unlocked. The staff bylaws were updated to specify who can perform medical screenings.

In a statement reported by the Post, a UMMC spokesperson admitted that mistakes were made. “We take responsibility for the combination of circumstances in January that failed to compassionately meet our patient’s needs beyond the initial medical care provided. While our own thorough self-examination revealed some shortcomings, the regulatory assessment punctuates the necessity to more firmly demonstrate our unwavering commitment to safety quality, compassionate patient care.”

EMTALA, in general, requires hospitals to care for patients with emergent conditions, regardless of their ability to pay. Violations of EMTALA are often cited by CMS surveyors under patients’ rights or failure to do an adequate medical screening exam. In addition to potentially impacting a hospital’s accreditation or ability to bill Medicare, EMTALA violations can also come with a civil penalty, which can reach nearly $105,000 for each citation. The newspaper reports did not mention whether the hospital was fined in relation to the CMS findings.