?:abstract
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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost every aspect of health care delivery in the USA, and the emergency medicine system has been hit particularly hard while dealing with this public health crisis. In an unprecedented time in our history, medical systems and clinicians have been asked to be creative, flexible, and innovative, all while continuing to uphold the important standards in the USA health care system. In order to continue to provide quality services to patients during this extraordinary time, care providers, organizations, administrators, and insurers have needed to alter longstanding models and procedures to respond to the dynamics of a pandemic. The Emergency Medicine Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986, or EMTALA, is one example of where these alterations have allowed health care facilities and clinicians to continue their work of caring for patients while protecting both the patients and the clinicians themselves from infectious exposures, at the same time.
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