Texas Watch Says Consumers and Victims to Push for Patient Safety Laws; Family Tells Horrific Story of Mother's Fatal Surgery

DALLAS -- Texas Watch, the statewide consumer research and advocacy organization, has announced a major push for greater patient safety in Texas.

Representatives of Texas Watch were flanked by a Dallas family whose mother died after routine gallbladder surgery at Doctors Hospital, Dallas, during which her anesthesiologist forgot to reconnect her to an oxygen machine, and no one heard an alarm over music playing in the operating room.

Texas Watch spokespersons said that they will press to strengthen the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners' "resolve and resources" to discipline or suspend bad doctors, to open records to the public about doctors and hospitals who have been disciplined, and to initiate other insurance and legal reforms to protect patients.

"Patient protection should be the number one priority in any debate about medical care in the Texas Capitol, not the bottom-line profits of insurance companies and the medical industry," said Dan Lambe, Executive Director of Texas Watch. Lambe said Texas Watch would be working with lawmakers who support patient protections and health care accountability to introduce bills this upcoming session.

Craig Franklin, an executive with a Dallas consulting firm, said he and other family members would join the Patient Safety Advocates of Texas (PSAT), a network of Texas families who also have been touched personally by medical or hospital malpractice. The family regards the work as a way to pay tribute to their mother, Joan Franklin, who died Dec. 21, 2000.

"Mom would have wanted us to be here today," Franklin said. "She would have wanted us to speak out. Our mother died horribly and unnecessarily because of carelessness and greed. As a family, we want to do everything in our power to stop these kinds of things from happening." He encouraged families who want to join the effort to contact Texas Watch.

According to a complaint letter sent by the Franklin family to the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners, the doctors and hospital tried to cover up the many mistakes that resulted in their mother's death. The family learned the facts about the botched surgery only after their lawyer began investigating the incident.

"Among the most egregious aspects of this incident was that during the 10 days it took my mother to die, no one who had been in that operating room -- and no one at the hospital -- had the decency to tell our family what had happened," Franklin said. "It took a full-scale investigation to do what should have been done in the family waiting area." The Franklin family has refused multiple settlement offers because the hospital will not agree to the family's request for the hospital to say what it intends to do to keep similar incidents from occurring in the future.

The Franklin family has filed suit in the 134th Judicial District Court, Dallas County, Texas, against the anesthesiologist who was responsible for monitoring their mother during surgery and other parties who were involved in the surgical procedure.

"Under current law, Texas families are denied access to information about complaints filed against hospitals and doctors," continued Lambe. "This information would help patients make informed decisions on who they want to provide their medical care, and it is information that could help save innocent lives."

Lambe said that consumers will advocate for dramatic, pro-active reforms to the medical accountability systems in Texas, including:

-- Adding non-physician positions to the Texas State Board of Medical

Examiners, including a patient advocate, and increasing the board's

funding;

-- Requiring that the State collect information on medical errors in

hospitals and create a task force to make recommendations on how

hospitals can eliminate medical errors;

-- Making complaint and medical error information about doctors and

hospitals available to the public;

-- Posting details of disciplinary orders about doctors and hospitals on

the Internet;

-- Prohibiting a doctor whose medical license has been revoked or

suspended in another state from practicing in Texas;

-- Creating criminal penalties for failure to disclose a prior

disciplinary action; and

-- Providing whistleblower protection for doctors, nurses and other

caregivers.

The Franklin case highlights the increasing attention being focused on deaths that are occurring nationwide as a result of medical errors. The National Institute of Medicine has estimated that as many as 98,000 hospitalized Americans die each year due to physician or hospital error. The case also draws further attention to accusations about hospitals owned by Tenet Healthcare Corporation, one of the Nation's largest for-profit health care companies and the parent company of Doctors Hospital. According to news reports, federal agents last month raided a Tenet hospital in California in search of evidence of fraud, including conducting unnecessary surgeries to shore up flagging revenues. On December 9, the chairman of the company's shareholders' committee, a long-time physician, released a nine-page letter in which he accused Tenet of putting patients at risk in order to increase profits.

Source: PRNewswire