Frankfort Regional Medical Center Agreed to Pay $110,000 for Allegedly Violating Patient Dumping Statute by Failing to Provide an Appropriate Medical Screening Examination

On July 15, 2025, Frankfort Regional Medical Center (FRMC), Frankfort, Kentucky, entered into a $110,000 settlement agreement with OIG. The settlement agreement resolves allegations that FRMC violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). Based on its investigation and after FRMC self-reported the matter, OIG concluded that in June 2022, FRMC failed to provide an adequate medical screening examination to a patient who presented to FRMC. OIG alleged that the patient presented to FRMC’s Emergency Department (ED) via ambulance with a complaint of heat exhaustion. He had been working in a hot factory for seven hours and had a severe frontal headache, nausea, and projectile vomited clear fluids after the ambulance arrived at the factory. The patient arrived at FRMC’s ED and reported head pain of 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. He had vomiting or dry heaving, his skin was clammy, and he complained of heat exhaustion. Diagnostic blood work showed hyponatremia (low blood salt), hypokalemia (low blood potassium), and mild dehydration. The physician note states he was tachycardiac. FRMC provided IV fluids for dehydration. When the ED physician went to speak with the patient, the patient was upset and the physician decided to let him go back to sleep. One to two hours later, the patient was difficult to arouse, lethargic, and bradycardiac and his respiration rate was slowing. ED staff tried unsuccessfully to arouse him with ammonia salts. Believing this could be a drug overdose, the ED physician ordered Narcan, after which the patient became upset and began to walk around the ED. FRMC contacted the police department to arrest the patient for trespassing. Meanwhile, the patient sat in an ED hallway chair with arms cross and head down and was unresponsive to ED staff rubbing on his sternum. The patient was no longer verbal. Nevertheless, the ED physician cleared the patient for discharge to jail, and police officers carried the patient out of the ED. FRMC discharged the patient to jail with instructions for adult dehydration and a clinical note of drug overdose. Less than a day later, the patient was admitted to another hospital and treated for heat exhaustion.