On October 20, 2009, the patient presented to the hospital and was admitted for “uncontrolled hypertension and elevation in cardiac enzymes”. He was discharged on October 23, 2009, but returned seeking emergency attention that same day. He was again discharged on the 23rd. Later that day, he was taken to another hospital where he died. On November 11, 2011, the widow and estate filed an EMTALA lawsuit in federal court along with two state malpractice counts.
When faced with a motion to dismiss, Plaintiff’s counsel argued that the widow did not learn of the cause of action until November 1, 2009, and therefore the statute of limitations of two years had been met. The Court rejected this theory because EMTALA does not contain a “discovery” exception to its two year statute of limitations for civil actions. Federal courts have strictly enforced the two year rule without exception.
The two year rule for litigation does not apply to CMS regulatory enforcement, however. EMTALA requires the retention of on-call schedules and logs for at least five years, while regulatory cases can be brought up to seven years after the event in some cases. As a practical matter, CMS generally tends to focus on more recent cases, but citations have been brought more than two years after an event.
The court citation for this case is Messeroux v. Maimonides Medical Center, No 11-CV-05343 (E.D.N.Y. May 31, 2013).
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Date of filing corrected from 2009 in original post to 2011. 6/19/2013.