Medical Repatriation Does Not Justify Hospital Entanglement in Nonmedical Matters

摘要

Kuczewski (2012) offers three conditions that must be met in order to justify repatriation of patients: The transfer must serve a patient's best interest, informed consent must be obtained, and the hospital must conduct due diligence to ensure that the patient's medical needs with be met in the destination country. Cases where all three criteria are met-if indeed they can ever be met-are likely to be exceedingly rare. Since Kuczewski excludes "the issue of reimbursement" as an aspect of the patient's best interest under the first requirement, the scenario would presumably only arise in cases where a patient would be better served by leaving a full-service hospital in the United States for a less acute care setting abroad.