If you've experienced medical malpractice at an Indian Health Service clinic or at a facility run by the Indian Healthcare System, it's important to understand that the federal government may not be liable for your injuries due to a "loophole" in the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Indian Health Service Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
One of the unfortunate traps for claimants who have been injured by care provided at government facilities concerns contractors. Increasingly, healthcare facilities owned and operated by the United States employ contractors to provide direct and indirect patient services. These individuals are usually hired on a temporary basis. By means of carefully drawn agreements which spell-out their contractor status, the government tries to make it clear that they are not 'employed by' the United States. As a matter of law, the federal government is typically not held responsible for the negligence of contractors.
Only genuine employees of the United States are entitled to the protections of the Federal Tort Claims Act. Determining whether a doctor, physicians' assistant, nurse practitioner, nurse, anesthetist, etc. is or is not an employee of the United States for FTCA purposes is something which has to be tackled very early on in the analysis of a potential medical malpractice lawsuit.
If the employment status of the key medical personnel in a given case is not determined promptly, a medical malpractice claimant can find out "too late" that the government disavows any responsibility for the injury. By that time, a given state's statute of limitations may have run out, and an injured person will have no place in which to pursue their federal tort claim for compensation.
Indian Health Medical Malpractice Attorneys & Statute Of Limitations
Indian Health Service medical malpractice lawyers say that it's important to determine as early as possible whether the federal government is truly the 'legal employer' of an allegedly negligent health care provider. In fact, they say it is critical to the successful pursuit of a Federal Tort Claims case, or alternatively, to preserve the claimant's rights to bring a state court medical malpractice lawsuit in the jurisdiction where the injury took place.
California is the perfect example
California has a state law statute of limitations of one year from the date when an injury is recognized. This means that a medical malpractice case involving a private health care provider must normally be filed in state court within one year of the injury being discovered, or else it will be forever barred. In contrast, the time limit for bringing a federal tort claim due to negligent care by a federal government doctor or nurse is two years from that same date of discovery.
Indian Health Service medical malpractice attorneys must be familiar with both the limits of the Federal Tort Claims Act, as well as the risks that any given federal tort claim case may turn on the care of a contractor who may only be reachable under state law - and perhaps within a dramatically shorter time frame.
The various states have a number of different ways among them to calculate their statutes of limitation, which are deadlines for bringing medical malpractice lawsuits. So, it is vitally important for a medical malpractice attorney evaluating a presumed Federal Tort Claim not to lose sight of the possibility that their client may actually need to file a state-court medical malpractice lawsuit instead of - or sometimes in addition to - a Federal Tort claim.