I’ve been a medical malpractice lawyer for over 20 years now. During that time, I have seen a lot of bone-headed laws come from our esteemed Georgia Legislature. But one law, in particular, stands out as especially misguided — Georgia’s rule that reduces the standard of medical care hospitals and doctors are required to provide when a patient seeks treatment in an emergency room.
That’s right folks, when you go to an ER in Georgia for a heart attack, a snake bite, a stroke, a gunshot wound, or other critical emergency, the hospital, doctors, and nurses are only required to give you slight care. It wasn’t always this way. Until 2005, the standard of care in Georgia ERs was the same as everywhere else: patients were entitled to reasonable medical care — the kind that a prudent doctor or hospital would provide under the same or similar circumstances.
Things changed in 2005 when then-Governor Sonny Perdue pushed through a comprehensive tort reform bill that included amendments to O.C.G.A. § 51-1-29.5. Under the new law, if medical care is provided in a “hospital emergency department,” a patient must prove gross negligence — not just negligence — to bring a successful malpractice claim.
Subsequent rulings by Georgia’s appellate courts clarified that gross negligence means the “absence of even slight diligence.”[1] In other words, the new law changed the legal duty that hospitals and medical providers owed to patients and only slight care must be given when treatment occurs in the ER.[2]
The idea that hospitals should be held to a lower standard of care precisely when patients are at their most vulnerable defies logic and common sense. We go to ER when something terrible has happened or we are in fear for our lives or the lives of our family. It makes no sense that the worst injuries and illnesses deserve less care. It always astonishes people when I tell them that this is law in Georgia. They cannot believe that their legislators would make such a nonsensical and terrible change to the law that puts all of us at risk.
The lowering of the medical care standard in emergencies is just one example of the broader problem with so-called “tort reform.” The next time you hear that phrase tossed around in the news or on social media, take a closer look. Ask a lawyer you trust what it really means — or email me. I’ll be happy to explain.
[1] See Pottinger v. Smith, 293 Ga. App. 626 (2008); Quinney v. Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, 325 Ga. App. 112 (2013); Johnson v. Omondi, 294 Ga. 74 (2013); Abdel-Samed v. Dailey, 294 Ga. 758 (2014).
[2] Sw. Emergency Physicians, P.C. v. Quinney, 347 Ga. App. 410, 423 (2018).
