By John Malone
The choice of a hospital emergency department is a potentially life altering choice when you or a loved one is facing a medical emergency.
Hospitals frequently advertise the availability and quality of their emergency departments to draw in new patients; because patients equal revenue. When choosing a hospital emergency department, a numbers of factors might come to mind: the nature of the medical emergency, hospital size, location, rankings, etc.
However, one question that normally does not come up is: who employs the physicians working in the emergency department? This is likely because most people, understandably, assume that the physicians working in the hospital emergency department are employees of the hospital, and that the hospital with all of its resources will stand behind the care being provided by the physicians working in its emergency department. It's only when the emergency department doctor commits medical malpractice and a patient seeks just compensation for their injuries that the patient finds out that the doctor was an independent contractor, not a hospital employee, and the hospital will do everything it can to avoid being held liable for the quality of the care that was provided.
