Morales v. Sociedad Española De Auxilio Mutuo Y Beneficencia

SELYA, Senior Circuit Judge.

This appeal requires us to determine for the first time what it means to “come[ ] to” a hospital’s emergency department within the purview of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTA-LA), 42 U.S.C. § 1395dd. After carefully considering the language of EMTALA, the regulation addressing the pertinent statutory text, and the policies that underlie the statute, we hold that an individual can come to the emergency department for EMTALA purposes without physically arriving on the hospital’s grounds as long as the individual is en route to the hospital…