Page 9 - Dallas Vol 6 No 2

KAY VAN WEY | Medical Malpractice
Texas Still Blaming Moms for High Maternal
Death Rates
Iam not looking to pick a ght with the Texas Medical Board (TMB), but they have once again failed
patients. Remember, this is the same Texas Medical Board, who let Dr. Duntsch continue to operate on pa- tient’s spines a er being alerted that he was certain to continue maiming and killing if he wasn’t stopped. Don’t even get me started on that.
e purpose of the board is to pro- tect the public’s safety and welfare through the regulation of the practice of medicine. e board’s functions include, but are not limited to, es- tablishing standards for the practice of medicine by physicians. 22 TAC 161.2 (a)-(b)(1).
As you may have heard, Texas has a prominent place on the wall of shame for having one of the highest mater- nal mortality rates in the world. e United States is the most dangerous place in the developed world to have a baby, and, within the U.S., Texas ranks 43rd. To put this into perspec- tive, a woman having a baby in Ta- jikistan, Libya, Belize, Uzbekistan or other developing countries would be safer than having a baby in Texas. Let that sink in.
e World Health Organization (WHO), and other highly credible and non-political organizations, have studied the problem of why so many women are dying a er childbirth and concluded that most of the deaths are preventable.
A few simple measures could save over 80% of the women who die each year from pregnancy and birth related causes. Life-saving methods have been created, tested, and proven successful, but we continue to toler- ate the outdated approaches that led the United States to fall so far behind other developed countries.
California adopted a program that
reduced the maternal mortality rate by 21% in the rst year alone! e program calls for accountability by mandating the open ow of infor- mation between doctors, nurses, and the medical community. California and others know that removing the stigma of medical mistakes allows doctors to learn from their mistakes and can lead to a collective experi- ence that focuses on decreasing pre- ventable medical errors. e airline industry has adopted this approach, yet preventable medical errors take more lives in this country than if a jumbo jetliner full of passengers crashed every day. But Texas decided not to adopt that part of the Califor- nia model, choosing instead to allow the problem to live in the shadows of secrecy.
e causes of death during, and shortly a er, childbirth is very well known. Postpartum hemorrhage and hypertension are two of the leading killers of women, and both can be prevented with simple modi cations in clinical practice. Texas created its Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force in 2013, but the solutions it proposed did not include many of theprovencomponentsofthesystem pioneered in California.
Let’s take hemorrhage, for example. e hemorrhage crash cart adopted in California as part of its reform caused the number of deaths related to maternal hemorrhage to drop by 55%, making this the safest state in the nation to have a baby. How about hypertension? States using the hem- orrhage and hypertension bundles have seen maternal deaths drop, on average, by 22% or more with par- ticipants reporting signi cant reduc- tions in recognition and response times for treatment.
In 2016, the TMB released the
AttorneyAtLawMagazine.com
hemorrhage bundle, but instead of then adopting the hypertension bun- dle, which would immediately start saving women’s lives, they decided to bump it to later while they use the re- sources intended for maternal death issues on ghting drug addictions.
e opioid bundle that the TMB decided was more important than the hypertension bundle, addresses postpartum addiction to painkillers. While the opioid addiction rates in America continue to rise, the Task Force was created to focus on the de ciencies in treatment and follow up care, the actions of doctors, and the systematic de ciencies of hospi- tals resulting in maternal death, not to wage a new war on drugs against women.
Instead of concentrating on im- proving healthcare for moms, Texas directed its resources to shi ing the blame away from healthcare provid- ers and onto the mothers themselves.
Shi ing the focus to drugs in this context is misguided because, while opioid addiction in mothers can come with a whole host of problems for both mother and child, this is not the primary cause of maternal mor- tality or the most preventable.
Even worse, the conviction that preventing moms from becoming dependent on painkillers is more im- portant than teaching doctors how to recognize high blood pressure or prepare for maternal hemorrhage strongly suggests that the TMB con- tinues to shirk its
legal duty to pro- tect patients in fa- vor of protecting doctors. Mean- while, mothers continue to die.
Kay Van Wey is a plaintiff’s medical malpractice attorney. After more than 30 years, her goal is to make herself extinct by helping to eradicate preventable medical errors. Voted Texas Super Lawyer for 15 consecutive years and named to D Best Magazine in tort product and medical liability litigation: plaintiff. Kay is board certi ed in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and named a Trial Legend by the Dallas Bar Association. Kay serves as adjunct professor at SMU Dedman School of Law , teaching on Law and Medicine. Contact Kay on- line at vanweylaw.com or [email protected].
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