Re:Inside Tesla’s factory, a medical clinic designed to igno...
by fhbdukfrh on Tuesday November 06, 2018 @02:06PM
(#18393968)
I'm in Canada so not covered by the same laws as US states, but a few years back i went to my gp with what he quickly diagnosed as a life-threatening blood clot. He explicitly stated "i don't think we need to call an ambulance but you need to go to ER immediately". He gave me a note for the triage nurse to expedite admitting and i was into the ICU within the hour.
My wife drive me by nothing stopped me from using a taxi or ride share.
Doctors definitely have a duty of care that must consider emergency transport, but it's be surprised if laws explicitly stated you need to call an ambulance for stable patients that need emergency treatment.
State law regulates drivers, medical transport is a subsection and medical transport is further broken down into emergency transportation and non-emergency transportation. What the law says is you can’t just start offering medical transportation services to the public in exchange for money without complying with the law/regulations.
Further, as you might imagine doctors are regulated, and if you are treating a patient who needs to be transported to an ER for emergency services, the doctor should understand a Lyft/Uber isn’t the appropriate standard of care and is per se illegal under those facts. The doctor may have had his/her heart in the right place be not calling an abmbulance to reserve that for a hypothetical life/death patient, but it’s hard to argue this isn’t an emergency when your a doctor sending your patient to the ER, at which point emergency medical transportation laws/regulations apply.