OK, I’m thinking we need a STAT consult from Walter Olsen at Overlawyered.com. If his blog isn’t on your list of daily reads, it should be.

A Muslim woman named Rona Mohammedi comes to the Somerset Medical Center emergency department with “severe chest pain.” She refuses to get undressed in front of a strange man so that EKG leads could be applied to her body in order to see whether she was having a heart attack. Already JCAHO is going to have a field day with this case.

Apparently the patient demanded that a woman perform the EKG and no women technicians were available. The patient waited in the emergency department for five hours before leaving against medical advice and going to another hospital. Now she is suing the first hospital for discrimination and for violating the patient’s bill of rights.

In the linked article, the author of a book on Muslim women’s civil rights says that “a number” of such lawsuits have been filed and some settlements and compromises have been reached.

If you undress the patient against her will, you’re sued for assault and for violating her religious rights.
If you don’t undress the patient, you’re sued for discrimination.
If you don’t undress the patient and you miss a medical problem, you’re sued for malpractice.
Kind of like bringing your car to a mechanic and threatening to sue him if he opens the hood, but also threatening to sue him if he doesn’t fix your car.

Yes, the patient’s initial request was only for a female EKG technician. But what if there were no female nurses? Or no female doctors? Or no female radiology technicians? Is the patient going to dress back up after her EKG and refuse further examination?
What if the EKG showed an acute MI? Thrombolytics and cath lab on hold until we can find an all-female staff?

If Jehovah’s Witnesses can refuse blood transfusions and then accept the responsibility for their actions, Muslim women who refuse to disrobe in the emergency department should do the same. This woman and her lawyer should be forced to reimburse the hospital for having to defend this frivolous lawsuit.

This case is another example of why we need to begin using video cameras to capture interactions in emergency department examination rooms.

By the way, does anyone know whether or not Muslim women are allowed to wear hijabs in prision? Or in court?

UPDATE JULY 15, 2010

First, thanks to Jenn and Muhammad for answering my questions in the comments section. Their answers and a comment on the New Jersey newspaper’s web site raise another important issue.
A commenter on the newspaper’s web site stated that “Rona’s husband is a NY Attorney, and the attorney covering the case is a partner in his law firm. This is probably more a case of entitlement and arrogance as opposed to the Hospital not respecting their religious rights.”
I checked for attorneys with the last name of “Mohammedi” on Martindale.com and wasn’t able to find an attorney in NY or in NJ with that last name. However, using Google, I did find an attorney named Omar Mohammedi who works in the NYC Commission on Human Rights who is the president of the New York Area Muslim Bar Association.
If what Jenn and Muhammad are saying is true regarding Muslim religious requirements, then it raises a question in my mind whether this patient may have purposely misstated the requirements of her religion so that she could get preferential treatment or possibly even as a pretense so that she could file a lawsuit.
If the patient really did overstate the requirements of her religion, Somerset Medical Center and any doctors named in the lawsuit should be filing their own lawsuit against the patient for fraud and filing ethics charges against her attorney and her attorney’s law firm for perpetuating the fraud.
Come to think of it, maybe they should file the lawsuit anyway and let a jury decide what really happened. That’s what lawsuits are for, right? Resolving disputes?

Just read about a case involving the next step down the slippery slope of criminal prosecution of physicians.

First Michael Jackson’s physician gets prosecuted when his physician gives him an unintentional overdose of an anesthetic medication when trying to help him sleep. According to a previous discussion on this topic, most people seemed to think that prosecutors were justified in those charges.

Now, Dr. Mathew Wallack is being criminally investigated for illegally prescribing excessive doses of narcotics.

Who should be responsible when a patient dies from an overdose of medication and a physician allegedly prescribes “too much” of that medication? Oh, and how do we define “too much”?
Then who should be responsible for making sure that patients aren’t getting multiple prescriptions from multiple physicians – which could result in an overdose and death?
Then who should be responsible if physicians don’t have access to that information – preventing them from determining whether their prescription, combined with the patient’s other prescriptions, may lead to overdose and death?
Then who should be responsible if physicians prescribe a one-month supply of medications and the patients take them all within a week and die?

This is why I think criminal prosecution of physicians who make mistakes is a bad idea. We may be able to pick out the “outlier” cases that might warrant criminal prosecution, but should we subject those practicing medicine to criminal prosecution by using vague definitions? Take their licenses away. File civil actions against them. Jail time shouldn’t be part of the paradigm.

The further we travel down the road of criminalizing medicine, the more difficult it will become to draw a line between what is and is not considered “criminal” behavior … and the fewer physicians that will want to practice medicine.

A mom is given a newborn baby to nurse during middle of night in the hospital (one of Dr. Wes’ hospitals of all places, too). Only problem was that the mom was accidentally given another family’s infant. The mom then nursed another family’s baby. A nurse walked in the room and was surprised to see mom nursing the wrong child. After learning about the mistake, now mom and her personal injury attorney husband are suing the hospital for more than $30,000.

Hmmm. If they’re suing for the value of lost milk, a couple of ounces for $30,000 amounts to about a quarter million dollars a gallon.
Comparing breast milk to oil, according to the lawsuit, this mom’s milk would cost $10 million per barrel. OPEC is lucky if it makes $150 a barrel — those guys really need to hire her husband’s law firm.
If they’re suing for her lost time, then 10 minutes to nurse the kid amounts to $180,000 an hour for wetnursing. That’s not bad coin, either.
Although you do have to consider that her husband’s law firm stands to make about one-third of any judgment, so her potential take home is considerably less.

Just another example of why we need a loser pays tort system in this country.

UPDATE FEBRUARY 15, 2010
In the comments below, Max Kennerly made an interesting claim. The parents’ lawsuit against the hospital might be able to proceed on a theory of battery.
If it is a battery claim, then these poor injured plaintiffs should really be suing the newborn infant for negligent suckling. Why are they suing the hospital?
The hospital can’t batter anyone – unless one of its lights falls off the ceiling and konks someone on the noggin. And I’m sure the aide who handed the baby to the mom didn’t offensively touch the mother.
Oops. I almost forgot. Battery claims require intent – they’re intentional torts. So the lawsuit still has no business being filed.

Come to think of it, I think that the infant’s family should sue the mother. After all, Jennifer Spiegel intentionally shoved her boob in this poor infant’s face, probably scared the hell out of the kid, and could have nearly suffocated him. And she did all this without even checking to see whether or not it was her kid.
In fact, the hospital should probably call the Department of Child Protective Services on that lady.
Battery. Indecent exposure to a minor.
Jail time isn’t good enough for her. Bring back the stockades.