EMTALA Online -- Health Law Resource Center

www.medlaw.com

Who is Stephen A. Frew anyway?

Good question!! On the Internet, it is often hard to tell whether you are dealing with real people, and I believe you have the right to know who you dealing with -- both professionally and personally.

Professionally:

Since September 2004, I have been Vice President of Risk Consulting for Johnson Insurance Services LLC where I am actively engaged in Risk Consulting for professional liaiblity insurance clients of Johnson Insurance and consult with non-client hospitals and medical providers throughout the country on medical-legal, EMTALA, HIPAA, JCAHO, and other compliance and liability exposures and practical solutions to those issues.

I maintain this site as my personal project out of an on-going commitment to compliance, risk management, and EMTALA. It is a comunication tool with those of you in the field that allows me to help you and you to educate me on the issues you face. Johnson Insurance graciously encourages this effort, but is NOT responsible for its content. The views expressed on this site and in my EMTALA E-Bulletin are my own and do not imply any endorsement or approval by Johnson Insurance or any of the Johnson family of companies.

My experience includes more than 30 years in general legal practice with a major emphasis on healthlaw and EMTALA compliance. As a private consultant, I have worked on more than 100 EMTALA citations, litigation consulting, and malpractice case defense. In the past two years, HIPAA privacy and security issues have assumed a growing importance in my consulting. One of my prime loves, however, has been the presentations and educational sessions I have provided to hundreds of hospitals, medical, and legal groups on EMTALA and medical-legal issues.

I served as a volunteer Fire-Rescue-EMT instructor and rescue crew member for more than 20 years before "aging out", and have had the honor of serving as national president of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians for two terms and serving as a liaison member to the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians. These parallel tracks of law career and healthcare have merged my concern for patients and quality care, respect for healthcare providers,and an orientation to service with the legal skills, training, and perspective to make healthcare risk and compliance consulting, education, and advocacy a true mission. I cannot claim to have started out with this outcome in mind, but the result has been as fulfilling as it has been challenging and demanding.

I retired from law practice in 2002 to work inside the medical malpractice insurance industry, and in that position for two years I learned the medical-legal and insurance malpractice issues from an entirely different -- and enlightening --perspective.

When the opportunity came to join the Johnson organization, I jumped on it as an opportunity to apply these new concepts and strategies to help healthcare providers in the increasingly difficult medical liability arena and to return to providing more direct involvement in solutions for the clients I work with. Information on the services I now offer is available at this link.(Please note: I do not sell insurance solutions or consult on insurance coverage, but I will be happy to refer you to my team-mates at Johnson if you need help in that regard.)

I am a member of the American Health Lawyers' Association, the Illinois Health Lawyer's Association, the American Society of Healthcare Risk Managers, and the Wisconsin and Illinois chapters of ASHRM. While I am still licensed in various state and federal courts, I terminated legal office practice in 2002 and no longer accept legal clients.

Philosophy:

My approach to EMTALA compliance and medical-legal risk is conservative and "risk adverse". I believe that hospitals and healthcare providers have no choice but to be compliant, to build systems that support compliance and quality, and to educate their staffs to support that approach. I am strongly committed to healthcare providers and to education. My site reflects those values.

This philosophy is one of the prime reasons that I selected Johnson for my affiliation. Their reputation and ethics in their multi-billion dollar private corporate family of manufacturing, investing, banks, and insurance stand in stark contrast to the modern lack of ethics that is so common in our society. With my own standards being so demanding, Johnson was truly a one-of-a-kind opportunity to provide service to healthcare providers.

Personally:

I am the proud father of Jordan (age 22) and Amy (11 going on 19). In a time when it is so challenging for kids, I heaved a sigh of relief when Jordan graduated from college without flunking out or getting in person or grade problems. He has been a great kid and has never given me any problems...except on politics. He helps me with my website work as my webmaster. He currently lives in Iowa, where he attended college.

Amy is well on her way to being as good or better of a student as her brother-- and being a girl, she has Dad firmly wrapped around her little finger. Her concerns since 9/11 about my extensive air travel were a major factor in my retirement from law practice and private consulting in February 2002. With the new responsibilities and a return to national consulting and travel, she has been very supportive because of the extra time I get with her on the many days I get to work from home.

My mom, dad, sister, and a brother live in Rockford. Another brother lives in Florida. Until August, 2002, I was responsible for my grandmother's affairs. She died at age 111 in small rural nursing home, near the family farm where she had lived and worked until age 104. I inherited her values, tenacity, politics, and a serious misconception of how big a "serving" of food is.

What I hope this means to you...

I hope this insight into exactly who I am serves to make this website a little more comfortable for you and gives you some confidence in relying on the information on this site and to help you meet your EMTALA and other risk issues and solve them. I hope that it also helps you decide on whether I am the person you want for advice and solutions if you or your facility need consulting services.

Best wishes:

Steve Frew