Increased use of emergency departments for primary care puts undue burden on EDs; however, EMTALA obligates EDs to provide care to patients regardless of their ability to pay.
A review of legal decisions that have interpreted a hospital emergency department's obligation under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act to stabilize a patient.
A bioethicist argues that two journal articles about quality of life-adjusted years research oversimplifies the issue and do not take into consideration people's abilities to adapt to disability and disease.
A health economics professor believes more research is needed on quality of life-adjusted years to explore the way we describe health states, the elicitation of patient values, and how to develop methods for obtaining informed general population preferences.
Elly A. Stolk, MSc and Floortje E. van Nooten, MSc
Two medical technology researchers argue that patients' own valuations of their health states may result in devaluation of interventions that can help them.
Drivers, physicians, and motor vehicle agencies all have some responsibility in reducing the number of fatal traffic accidents caused by driver sleepiness.
The physical exam aids differential diagnosis and is unlikely to be replaced by new technology. It is important in resource-poor settings and in the litigious U.S., and it fosters a trusting and therapeutic patient-doctor relationship.
Brain-computer interfaces raise many ethical questions. The brain is inviolate no more, and that implies a challenge for medical ethics as neuroscientists and surgeons attempt to restore and enhance brain function.