M. The attempts to wake up the child by his mother the next morning were unsuccessful resulting in a visit by paramedics who brought the child to the hospital at 6:46 A.M. Resuscitative efforts by the nurse at the hospital were terminated approximately 20 minutes later since the patient had died. It was later established that the patient died because of dehydration from vomiting and diarrhea from C. difficile. Following this discovery, the child's parents filed a lawsuit against the hospital for breach of the U.S. Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) in the Indiana District Court. Based on this legislation, one of the basic requirements for hospitals is a suitable medical screening examination for patients who need evaluation or treatment at the emergency department. While the legislation does not establish the details of a suitable medical screening evaluation, it focuses on the standardization of the way emergency patients are handled. EMTALA was used by the Indiana District Court to determine whether the hospital had an established screening process for the patient's...

The court also sought to determine whether the established screening procedure was applied by the hospital to this patient in similar way to other emergency patients with the same symptoms.
While it had an established policy for uniform appropriate medical screening of emergency patients, the hospital was found guilty as the nurse neglected the screening procedure ("EMTALA: Dehydrated Pediatric Patient Dies," 2009). The emergency room nurse at the hospital did not take the required initial or subsequent blood pressures. The hospital didn't follow its own medical screening procedures and violated legal obligations under EMTALA.