Pro Bono: Preventing Ambulance Contamination

What you can do to prevent patient claims of contracted illness We've all heard the saying, "Cleanliness is next to godliness." But in healthcare, it also can be considered a legal obligation. This month, we examine the potential liability of an EMS agency to a patient claiming harm from contamination in an ambulance. In over 20 years as an EMS attorney, I've never had to defend a client in a lawsuit by a patient claiming to have been harmed by a contaminated ambulance. Nobody in our firm has had to defend such a case. Since I'd like to think our EMS law practice at Page, Wolfberg & Wirth is a microcosm of what's happening in EMS, anecdotally I'd conclude that liability for alleged ambulance contamination is extremely rare. But, in my experience, I've also found that it's the exceedingly rare type of liability for which many EMS agencies are underprepared and lax in their vigilance. It's important to remember that a patient claiming harm from ambulance contamination would have the burden of proof in any lawsuit. This means that the plaintiff would have to prove-by a preponderance of the evidence-that it's more likely than not that their harm was caused by your contaminated ambulance. Proving "proximate causation," as the law refers to it, is always one of the toughest hurdles for a plaintiff; in a case alleging ambulance contamination, it would be a particularly uphill battle. Nevertheless, one can imagine a scenario in which a plaintiff is able to obt...
Source: JEMS Operations - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Columns Administration and Leadership Operations Source Type: news