COVID-19 Creates Thicket of Legal Concerns for Providers

The article addresses some of the novel legal issues that health care providers are grappling with as they treat patients amid the COVID-19 pandemic, leading them to seek protections from various levels of government.

“The concern with COVID, obviously, is when you have patients coming in faster than the hospital can process … the question then becomes if these folks have communicable airborne diseases, how do you isolate them to prevent additional infection? And the answer is, they do the best they can with what they have,” Mr. Grimm said.

He added that it would be difficult for someone to prove they contracted the virus at one specific location, and so long as facilities could demonstrate they complied with existing infection control guidelines, a plaintiff would not be likely to prevail. “There will be lawsuits. It goes back to: Anyone can sue anyone for anything,” Douglas said.

To read the Healthcare Dive article, click here.