MHA 5101, Legal Foundations of Health Care 1 Course Learning Outcomes for Unit III Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to: 3. Assess the role of laws designed specifically for the healthcare environment. 3.1 Describe a scenario in which an intentional tort was committed within the healthcare environment. 3.2 Explain the legal remedies a victim of an intentional tort can pursue. 5. Examine the rights and responsibilities of the patient, physician, and medical practice. 5.1 Describe a scenario in which a patient’s rights may have been violated by a healthcare provider. 5.2 Explain the responsibility of healthcare providers to protect their patients from harm. 6. Analyze the characteristics of negligence in the healthcare environment. 6.1 Apply the elements of negligence and professional negligence to patient claims against providers. Course/Unit Learning Outcomes Learning Activity 3.1 Unit Lesson Chapter 5 Reading Unit III Assignment 3.2 Unit Lesson Chapter 5 Reading Unit III Assignment 5.1 Chapter 4 Reading Unit Lesson Unit III Assignment 5.2 Chapter 4 Reading Unit Lesson Unit III Assignment 6.1 Chapter 6 Reading Unit Lesson Unit III Assignment Reading Assignment Chapter 4: Tort Law-Negligence Chapter 5: Intentional Torts Chapter 6: Criminal Aspects of Health Care UNIT III STUDY GUIDE Criminal and Civil Law in Healthcare MHA 5101, Legal Foundations of Health Care 2 UNIT x STUDY GUIDE Title Unit Lesson Negligence Negligence claims are filed by a person or persons who are wronged by another person. Anyone can be sued for negligence. The plaintiff must prove that the defendant had a duty to the plaintiff, that the defendant breached that duty, and that the breach of duty caused an injury to the plaintiff. Negligence is part of a category of legal claims called torts. Torts are simply legal wrongs against a person or persons. There are different types of negligence, including professional negligence. Professional negligence is also called malpractice. A malpractice claim can be brought against any professional with superior knowledge as demonstrated by higher skill or education. In general, a state-issued certification or license is enough to establish a superior knowledge or training. This label of malpractice is not limited to just doctors. Professionals such as lawyers, hairdressers, plumbers, mechanics, and many more categories of service professionals may be sued for malpractice. Many people know someone who experienced a medical mistake. It could be a friend or a family member or even yourself. What happens after you learn that an injury was caused by a mistake? This is where negligence comes in. For example, a 60-year-old male patient goes into a hospital for a routine procedure such as a colonoscopy. After the surgery, his wife is told that he is in recovery, and everything is going to be fine. The wi ...

1. MHA 5101, Legal Foundations of Health Care 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit III
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
3. Assess the role of laws designed specifically for the
healthcare environment.
3.1 Describe a scenario in which an intentional tort was
committed within the healthcare
environment.
3.2 Explain the legal remedies a victim of an intentional tort
can pursue.
5. Examine the rights and responsibilities of the patient,
physician, and medical practice.
5.1 Describe a scenario in which a patient’s rights may have
been violated by a healthcare
provider.
5.2 Explain the responsibility of healthcare providers to protect
their patients from harm.
6. Analyze the characteristics of negligence in the healthcare
environment.

2. 6.1 Apply the elements of negligence and professional
negligence to patient claims against
providers.
Course/Unit
Learning Outcomes
Learning Activity
3.1
Unit Lesson
Chapter 5 Reading
Unit III Assignment
3.2
Unit Lesson
Chapter 5 Reading
Unit III Assignment
5.1
Chapter 4 Reading
Unit Lesson
Unit III Assignment
5.2
Chapter 4 Reading
Unit Lesson
Unit III Assignment
6.1
Chapter 6 Reading
Unit Lesson
Unit III Assignment

3. Reading Assignment
Chapter 4: Tort Law-Negligence
Chapter 5: Intentional Torts
Chapter 6: Criminal Aspects of Health Care
UNIT III STUDY GUIDE
Criminal and Civil Law
in Healthcare
MHA 5101, Legal Foundations of Health Care 2
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title
Unit Lesson
Negligence
Negligence claims are filed by a person or persons who are
wronged by another person. Anyone can be sued
for negligence. The plaintiff must prove that the defendant had
a duty to the plaintiff, that the defendant
breached that duty, and that the breach of duty caused an injury

4. to the plaintiff. Negligence is part of a
category of legal claims called torts. Torts are simply legal
wrongs against a person or persons.
There are different types of negligence, including professional
negligence. Professional negligence is also
called malpractice. A malpractice claim can be brought against
any professional with superior knowledge as
demonstrated by higher skill or education. In general, a state-
issued certification or license is enough to
establish a superior knowledge or training. This label of
malpractice is not limited to just doctors.
Professionals such as lawyers, hairdressers, plumbers,
mechanics, and many more categories of service
professionals may be sued for malpractice.
Many people know someone who experienced a medical
mistake. It could be a friend or a family member or
even yourself. What happens after you learn that an injury was
caused by a mistake? This is where
negligence comes in.
For example, a 60-year-old male patient goes into a hospital for
a routine procedure such as a colonoscopy.
After the surgery, his wife is told that he is in recovery, and
everything is going to be fine. The wife is relieved
and starts calling family to let them know everything is fine and
that he is recovering. A couple of hours go by,
and his wife is waiting patiently to see her husband. She is told
she can see him after he wakes up from the
anesthesia. Another hour goes by, and the wife starts to worry.
She asks the nurse for an update, and she
repeats the same thing. The wife can see him when he is out of
the holding area and moved into the recovery
room. When a total of four hours goes by, she is getting very
concerned and demands to see the doctor.

5. Before the nurse can ring the doctor, the doctor appears in the
waiting room to speak to her. The doctor tells
the patient’s wife that her husband had a reaction in the
recovery room to the anesthesia and passed away
shortly after regaining consciousness. The woman immediately
collapses in grief.
Weeks after her husband’s death, she contacts the hospital to
find out what happened. The hospital repeats
that he had a reaction to the anesthesia and never regained
consciousness. This, however, was not what she
was told at the hospital. She keeps getting conflicting reports or
no information at all. This leads her to file a
lawsuit against the hospital, the doctor, and the nurses who
treated her husband. She files a claim of medical
malpractice.
Intentional Torts
In contrast to acts of negligence are intentional torts. The
primary difference between acts of negligence and
intentional torts is, of course, the intent behind the tort. This
means that the plaintiff must prove that the
defendant intended the action, regardless of the result or injury
of the plaintiff. The intentional torts include the
following: assault, battery, false imprisonment, defamation,
fraud, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction
of mental distress.
The following scenario further explains the concept of
intentional torts.
In general, the claim of assault does not require actual physical
contact with the victim; it only requires the
threat of harmful contact. Threatening someone that you are
standing close to can be an assault.

6. Sarah works for a terrible boss. Her boss John is verbally
abusive and rude, but since it is a job that pays
well, she never really pays attention to what he says. Instead,
she just tolerates it. He does not make any
harassing or sexually offensive remarks. He is just loud and
rude. Sarah has worked for John for five years.
One morning, Sarah was getting everything ready for the day.
She had come to work a little early and was
straightening up her desk to tackle her day.
MHA 5101, Legal Foundations of Health Care 3
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title
Yesterday, after John left, she had taken a message. John’s
sister had called and said not to forget his
brother’s birthday party this Saturday. She had left the written
message on John’s desk and started her day
the next morning while waiting for him to come in.
John came marching into the office looking very agitated, more
so than usual. Sarah was working at her desk.
Suddenly, her chair is spun around while she is sitting in it, and
John is standing before her, enraged. Sarah
almost falls out of her chair. John raises his hand, and Sarah
thinks for sure he was going to hit her. She curls

7. up in a ball and prepares for him to hit her. John suddenly slams
his hand down on her desk next to her and
starts screaming that the message was from his sister-in-law
because his sister has been dead for six
months. He continues to scream and physically threaten her by
his stance and raising and lowering his fist.
John never actually touches Sarah, but she is terrified and in
real fear for her safety. As soon as John leaves
to go back to his office, Sarah grabs her purse and goes running
out of the building. She is so scared that she
goes straight home and does not even tell HR. Sarah is told she
has abandoned her job and is fired.
Once she has calmed down, she brings a lawsuit against John
and the company. John is outraged when he is
dragged into the human resources (HR) office. He admits he lost
his temper at Sarah’s incompetence, but he
tells HR and the company’s in-house counsel he never touched
her. He did not hit her or touch her at all. He
just yelled.
John is terminated for assaulting another employee.
In this case, the intent behind the tort was evident by John’s
actions. He intentionally spun Sarah’s chair,
intentionally threatened her, and intentionally pounded his fist.
It does not matter what he intended the
outcome to be. He has committed an assault by threatening
Sarah. An assault can occur without any contact.
It is based upon the threat the victim feels.
Criminal Aspects of Health Care
Most of what we have discussed so far has involved civil
claims, which are claims brought by one person

8. against another seeking monetary damages. This is different
from criminal charges. Criminal charges are
brought by a governmental entity, such as the local, state, or
federal government. While some of the
intentional torts also have a criminal counterpart, there a
number of criminal claims that are within the
healthcare spectrum.
Patients and the government can file criminal charges within
their jurisdictions for fraud, abuse, criminal
negligence, murder, rape and sexual assault, or theft. These are
some of the possible criminal charges in the
healthcare field.
Criminal negligence, for instance, requires a higher burden of
proof for the government.
For example, a patient is recovering from surgery. He calls the
nurse and asks for pain medication. The nurse
asks the doctor who is on call that night. That doctor is tired
and waiting for his shift to end so he can go on
vacation. He is annoyed that he has to work and wants to leave.
When he responds to the nurse, he tells her
the patient can have painkillers and writes down the amount and
dosage. The doctor, however, is in a hurry,
misplaces the decimal point, and unintentionally overdoses the
patient by ten times the amount. The nurse
asks the doctor to confirm the dosage. The doctor yells at the
nurse, “Of course it is correct! I wrote it. I am
the doctor! Just administer it like a nurse should.”
The nurse tells the doctor she would just call the next doctor to
confirm the dosage if he did not have time.
The doctor responds with the following: “Your job is not to
question me, and if it happens again, I will get
you fired!”

9. The nurse is scared for her job and follows the doctor’s orders.
The dosage is to be repeated every four
hours. The patient dies from the repeated overdoses in the next
48 hours.
MHA 5101, Legal Foundations of Health Care 4
UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title
In this instance, the doctor could be accused of criminal
negligence because of his total disregard for patient
safety. If the patient had received one or even two overdoses, it
is possible he could have recovered. The
doctor and hospital could have been sued civilly for medical
malpractice, but in this case, the doctor made the
error and prevented the nurse from catching it. This could rise
to the level of criminal negligence since the
doctor did not allow the nurse to double-check the dosage which
could have saved the patient’s life.
In conclusion, health care has many legal risks and potential
hazards for both providers and patients. Patients
have the ability to bring claims against providers who have
injured them. The government has the ability to
bring criminal charges against providers whose actions against
patients rise to the level of criminal activity, as
in the example above.