Tag: Federally-Qualified Health Centers

Trap for the Unwary Works Again: Federal Healthcare and the Limitations Provision of the Federal Tort Claims Act

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By Alex Stein

The same story involving a federally qualified health center (FQHC) repeats itself again, again, and now again: see Phillips v. Generations Family Health Center, — Fed.Appx. —- (2016), 2016 WL 5340278 (2d Cir. 2016).

A patient from Connecticut receives medical treatment from a physician who works at a Connecticut-based facility known as Generations Family Health Center. This center is an FQHC and the physician is consequently deemed a federal employee pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 233(g)-(n) (as explained, inter alia, in Phillips v. Generations Family Health Center, 723 F.3d 144, 145 (2d Cir. 2013)). The patient is unaware of this fact even though she could easily find it on the center’s website and in this database that belongs to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Subsequently, when the patient suspects that her physician committed malpractice, she and her attorney sue him in a Connecticut court because they believe him to be just a regular doctor from Connecticut. Alas, they could only sue the physician according to the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) after going through a mandatory administrative claim process at DHHS. 28 U.S. Code §§ 1346 (b)(1), 2675. When they realize it, the suit becomes time-barred pursuant to the FTCA, 28 U.S. Code § 2401 (b) (“A tort claim against the United States shall be forever barred unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate Federal agency within two years after such claim accrues or unless action is begun within six months after the date of mailing, by certified or registered mail, of notice of final denial of the claim by the agency to which it was presented.”). Read More

Malpractice, Apologies and the Statute of Limitations in Federally Qualified Health Centers

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By Alex Stein

Two months ago, the Seventh Circuit has delivered another important decision with regard to medical malpractice actions filed against federally qualified health centers. Blanche v. United States, 811 F.3d 953 (7th Cir. 2016). See also Arteaga v. United States, 711 F.3d 828 (7th Cir. 2013), and Sanchez v. United States, 740 F.3d 47 (1st Cir. 2014), discussed here.

Such actions can only be filed in federal courts pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), but patients and – worse – their attorneys are often unaware of this fact. As a result, by the time they properly file a suit, the FTCA’s two-year limitations period expires and the patient’s cause of action against the United States becomes time barred. See 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b). I call this problem “FTCA’s Trap for the Unwary.” To salvage the suit, the patient can petition for equitable tolling, but her chances of being granted equitable tolling are slim (in courts that still interpret the FTCA’s limitations provision as jurisdictional, those chances do not even exist). Read More

Medical Malpractice: FTCA’s Trap for the Unwary

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By Alex Stein

Anyone interested in medical malpractice must read the First Circuit’s decision in Sanchez v. United States, 740 F.3d 47 (1st Cir. 2014).

Mr. Sanchez’s wife died in a Massachusetts hospital shortly after delivering her third child by c-section. She died from arguably preventable hemorrhaging. Mr. Sanchez and his lawyer thought that they had a 3-year window for filing medical malpractice suit in connection with that death, as prescribed by Massachusetts law, Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 260, § 2A. Unbeknownst to them, however, the hospital was a federally qualified health center, which made the doctors who treated Mrs. Sanchez “federal employees” under the Federally Supported Health Centers Assistance Act of 1992, 42 U.S.C. § 233. As a result, Mr. Sanchez could only sue the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). He wouldn’t mind doing so, but his ability to file such a suit had expired in two years pursuant to FTCA. This predicament is known as FTCA’s trap for the unwary: see here. Read More