Giving Patients a Voice: The Fight for Accountability in Healthcare
At Van Wey, Metzler & Williams, we don’t just handle medical malpractice cases—we fight to change the system. Too often, patients are left in the dark, misled by legal disclaimers instead of receiving the clear, honest information they need to make informed healthcare decisions. When hospitals and doctors fail, the consequences are catastrophic—lives are shattered, families are left picking up the pieces, and justice feels out of reach.
Video Transcript
0:00
My name is Kay Van Wey, and for more than 40 years—although I hate to admit it’s been that long—I’ve represented patients whose lives have been destroyed by preventable medical errors.
I also serve as an adjunct professor of law at SMU Dedman School of Law, where I teach the course on Law and Medicine, which focuses on medical malpractice.
Alongside other attorneys, I played a pivotal role in the infamous Dr. Death cases, representing over a dozen of his victims and assisting the prosecution in landing him a life sentence in prison.
In addition to representing patients, I spend an inordinate amount of my time advocating for patient safety. Why? Because I am a patient, and everyone I love is a patient.
One thing everyone in this room has in common—regardless of which side of the aisle we sit on, whether we are Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal—is that every one of us is a patient, and everyone we love is a patient.
1:02
So, we have all likely found ourselves in the situation of having to undergo a medical procedure.
And we all know that moment—you’re naked and afraid, so to speak. You’re stripped of all your worldly belongings, wearing nothing but a paper gown, and the only thing that separates you from your fellow human is a little plastic wristband.
Then, the last thing that happens—whether you are sedated or not—is a nurse comes in with a clipboard and says, “Sign here. Initial here, here, here, and here.”
1:35
This has become a perversion of what the longstanding law on informed consent was originally intended to be.
For decades—even centuries—the law has recognized that physicians have an obligation to explain the risks of a procedure so that patients can make truly informed decisions before giving consent.
But today, these documents have become nothing more than legal disclaimer documents.
2:06
When you list death as a “known risk” of every procedure—whether it’s a bunionectomy or brain surgery—these consent forms become so cluttered with information that they are meaningless to the patient.
However, they are very meaningful to healthcare providers.
Why? Because once they comply with the prescribed forms, they are granted a legal presumption that they were not negligent in the delivery of informed consent.
2:42
Patients need a voice.
The Texas Medical Disclosure Panel has a conflict of interest because the more disclosures they add to these forms, the more protected they are.
Thank you for your time. Let’s do something to give patients a voice.
