Two hospitals broke a law requiring emergency medical care for facilities that are paid by Medicare, federal officials say.
The Freeman Health System in Joplin, Missouri, and the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, Kansas violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTLA) when they failed to “offer necessary stabilizing care” to a woman, officials with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said in notices to the hospitals.
The woman was identified as Mylissa Farmer by her lawyers, who said she was suffering from life-threatening pregnancy complications 17 weeks into her pregnancy when she went to the hospitals.
Doctors should have carried out an emergency abortion after Farmer’s water broke and it was determined her pregnancy was no longer viable, the National Women’s Law Center, which is representing Farmer, said in a complaint to CMS.
CMS investigators reached the same conclusion after the investigation. Officials said Farmer was discharged “with an un-stabilized emergency medical condition,” which created “a reasonable expectation that an adverse outcome resulting in serious injury, harm, impairment, or death will occur to current or future individuals in similar situations if not immediately corrected.”
U.S. authorities said EMTLA requires hospitals to provide emergency services even if the services might be illegal under state laws that have come into effect, or were approved, in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade. That position isn’t universal, though. A U.S. judge in 2022, for example, prohibited hospitals from following that guidance in contravention of Texas law, saying it “goes well beyond EMTALA’s text, which protects both mothers and unborn children.”
EMTLA “is silent as to abortion, and preempts state law only when the two directly conflict,” U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, said in his ruling.
Missouri law bans many abortions, though it contains exceptions for emergencies. Kansas law allows abortions up to 22 weeks. Both states require a waiting period and counseling prior to an abortion.
“Fortunately, this patient survived. But she never should have gone through the terrifying ordeal she experienced in the first place,“ Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. ”We want her, and every patient out there like her, to know that we will do everything we can to protect their lives and health, and to investigate and enforce the law to the fullest extent of our legal authority, in accordance with orders from the courts.”
Federal officials sent documents to hospitals that receive Medicare funds outlining their obligations under EMTLA and warning that “we will not hesitate to enforce your obligations under the law,” Becerra added.
Doctors at the two hospitals were said to have advised Farmer that her condition could rapidly get worse but that they could not carry out an abortion due to hospital policies.
A University of Kansas Health System spokesperson told news outlets in a statement: “The care provided to the patient was reviewed by the hospital and found to be in accordance with hospital policy. It met the standard of care based upon the facts known at the time, and complied with all applicable law. There is a process with CMS for this complaint and we respect that process. The University of Kansas Health System follows federal and Kansas law in providing appropriate, stabilizing, and quality care to all of its patients, including obstetric patients.”
Freeman Health System did not respond to a request for comment.
“I am pleased with this decision, but pregnant people across the country continue to be denied care and face increased risk of complications or death, and it must stop,” Farmer said in a statement. “I was already dealing with unimaginable loss and the hospitals made things so much harder.”
“What happened to our client Mylissa was not only horrific—CMS has just made crystal clear that it was illegal, regardless of where she lived or that state’s laws. This is an important step in getting Mylissa some justice for the harm she suffered, but no one should ever go through this in the first place,” added Michelle Banker, director of reproductive rights and health litigation at the National Women’s Law Center.
The notices sent to the hospitals warned that the legal violations placed them on the verge of losing Medicare funding unless they took steps to update how they handle similar cases moving forward.
“As of today, both hospitals have taken steps towards coming into compliance,” a CMS spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email. “CMS is continuing to work closely with them to ensure that they do so.”
Failure to comply would mean exclusion from Medicare participation. The hospitals would also be referred to the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, which has the power to remove doctors from state healthcare programs and levy fines against both physicians and hospitals.
