APNewsBreak: South Dakota Tribe Sues Feds Over ER Closure

[LiberalArkie]

A Native American tribe in South Dakota sued the federal government Thursday over the nearly five-month closure of the only emergency room on its reservation.

The federal lawsuit filed Thursday by the Rosebud Sioux Tribe asks that federal officials be forced to re-open the emergency room at the hospital administered by the Indian Health Service. The agency shuttered the ER in early December, two weeks after federal inspectors uncovered serious failures that they said put patients' lives at risk.

The lawsuit, which The Associated Press obtained ahead of it being filed, contends that the Indian Health Service — an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — broke the law because an evaluation of the impact of the closure wasn't submitted to Congress at least a year before it was shutdown, as required by the Indian Health Care Improvement Act.

Snip

IHS closed the emergency room citing "staffing changes and limited resources," and now intends to privatize it, as well as those at hospitals on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

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http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/apnewsbreak-south-dakota-tribe-sues-feds-er-closure-38742367

[KamaAina]

1. "and now intends to privatize it"?!