Emergency care deals with serious illness or injury
-- conditions severe enough to require immediate medical attention.
An emergency medical condition means a medical condition that
makes itself obvious by acute symptoms of sufficient severity
(including severe pain, psychiatric disturbances and/or substance
abuse) such that the absence of immediate medical attention could
reasonably be expected to result in:
- placing the health of the individual (or, with respect to a
pregnant woman, the health of the woman or her unborn child) in
serious jeopardy, or
- serious impairment to bodily functions, or
- serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part
- With respect to a pregnant woman who is having contractions,
emergency medical condition means
- that there is inadequate time to effect a safe transfer to
another hospital before delivery, or
- that the transfer may pose a threat to the health or safety of
the woman or the unborn child.
If you come to the hospital and request emergency services, you
have the legal right to receive a medical screening examination
within the capability of the hospital to determine whether an
emergency medical condition exists. If an emergency medical
condition does exist, you have the right to receive the care and
treatment necessary to relieve or eliminate the condition. If the
emergency department does not have the service capacity to treat the
emergency medical condition, you have the right to an appropriate
transfer to another facility.
Because medical emergencies occur suddenly and unexpectedly,
hospital emergency departments have to maintain 24-hour staffing and
have available state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment equipment.
The doctors, nurses and technicians are highly trained in emergency
and trauma care to provide rapid assessment and treatment of any
patient with a medical emergency.
Emergency care is appropriate when you have:
- unusually severe symptoms that you believe to be an emergency
- life-threatening illness or injury
- a minor emergency but do not have access to a doctor or a
walk-in care center
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