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Modernizing The Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act To Harmonize With The Affordable Care Act To Improve Equality, Quality And Cost Of Emergency Care, Katharine A. Van Tassel

Katharine Van Tassel

This Article will propose a very simple, two-step way to modernize EMTALA [Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (1986)] to deal with this cascade of problems. This solution converts EMTALA into a powerful tool to enhance equal access to healthcare while at the same time changing EMTALA so that it works in tandem with, instead of against, the efforts of the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Medicaid to improve healthcare quality, cost and equal access.

This solution also works across systems to resolve the conflict between the tort, licensure and hospital peer review systems that all discourage evidence-based treatment …