What Do Hospitals Do in an Emergency When a Patient Has No Insurance?

When you have an emergency medical condition, you have the right to treatment at a hospital emergency room regardless of whether you have health insurance, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That's been the case since a federal law regarding the matter was passed in 1986. This is known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act and it gives a patient the right to just enough treatment to stabilize his condition.

Emergency Condition

• Plenty of people without insurance turn up at the emergency room for treatment. In 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that a fifth of the 120 million emergency room visits that year involved people with no insurance. The staff is not obligated to treat you under any circumstance. What they must do is screen your condition before they even ask whether you have insurance.

Treatment

• Medical staff will carry out a triage procedure when you arrive at the emergency room, taking your vital signs such as pulse, blood pressure and temperature, and assessing your physical condition. If you are deemed to have a genuine emergency, the staff must stabilize you before they inquire about your insurance status. Stabilizing means treating you to the point at which you are no longer deteriorating and you can be regarded as out of imminent danger.

Transfer

• If you are in an emergency condition, you cannot be transferred out of the hospital where you arrived simply because you have no insurance. If the staff decides that they do not have the correct equipment or facilities to treat you, they may transfer you to another hospital for more appropriate treatment, but they cannot "dump" you on another hospital in order to avoid the cost of treating you.

Penalties

• Hospitals must follow this procedure with uninsured patients under threat of legal penalties. Under the 1986 EMTALA law, a hospital may be fined $50,000 for each violation if it tries to dump an emergency patient on another facility without providing proper treatment. Before the law was enacted, it was common for hospitals to move emergency patients to nearby non-profit charity hospitals, designed specifically to provide care to the low-income and uninsured. Doctors themselves can also be fined if they conceal a patient's true condition in order to avoid having to administer treatment.