Patient Abandonment – Home Health Care

Each of the five Elements must be present for a patient to have a proper civil cause of action for the tort of jealousy:

  • Health care treatment has been discontinued.

  • The termination of healthcare was contrary to the patient is will or without the patient is knowledge.

  • The medical care provider failed to arrange for care by another medical care provider that was skilled.

  • The medical care provider should have reasonably foreseen that injury to the individual would appear from the termination of their maintenance (proximate cause).

  • The patient suffered loss or harm .

Physicians, Other healthcare professionals, and nurses have a legal abandonment of patients, in addition to an ethical. The medical care professional has a responsibility to give her or his patient all essential attention so long as the situation required it and should not leave the patient at a vital stage without giving reasonable notice or making appropriate arrangements for the presence of another. [2]

Abandonment by the Doctor

When A doctor prescribes treatment of a patient, therapy must continue until the patient is conditions no longer warrant the treatment, the doctor and the patient mutually consent to finish the treatment by that doctor, or the patient discharges the doctor. Additionally, the doctor may unilaterally terminate the connection and withdraw from treating that individual only if he or she supplies the patient appropriate notice of their intent to withdraw and an chance to acquire proper substitute care.

In The home health setting, the physician-patient connection does not terminate merely because a patient is attention shifts in its place from the hospital to the home. If the individual continues to need medical services, supervised health care, treatment, or other home health services, the attending doctor should make sure he or she had been properly discharged his or her-duties into the patient. Every situation ‘where Medicare, Medicaid, or an insurer approves home care is going to be one where the patient is ‘needs for care have lasted. The physician-patient connection that existed in the hospital will continue unless it is been formally terminated by notice to the individual and a fair effort to refer the patient to some other proper physician. The physician will retain their duty toward the patient once the patient is discharged from the hospital. If the individual is injured because of this failure will constitute the tort of jealousy. This abandonment may expose the hospital, the doctor, and the home health agency for the tort of jealousy to liability.