The AdvoKayte Podcast: Holding Healthcare Accountable
Episode 11: Other Dr. Deaths Exist and the Data Proves It.
Aired on January 28th, 2026
Summary (33m 20s).
Episode 11: Other Dr. Deaths Exist and the Data Proves It.
What if Christopher Duntsch wasn’t an anomaly, but a warning?
How do these things happen?
Anne Roberts is a lawyer and an expert consultant on healthcare staffing and hospital privileging. She specializes in healthcare leadership, medical staff credentialing, and peer review processes. Anne joins Kay to talk about the good and bad systems in healthcare and how sometimes even best practices can be deceiving when it comes to what is good and bad in healthcare.
When it comes to medical malpractice and the law, Anne has a wealth of experience on both sides of the courtroom. She is a senior litigator at Van Wey & Metzler, where she focuses on medical malpractice and healthcare litigation. She also works with some of the largest healthcare organizations in America, including a current role as System Vice President of Medical Affairs Operations at Mount Sinai Health System in New York. In her nearly thirty-year career, Anne has seen the best and worst of the American medical system.
So how do these things happen? Anne and Kay exchange stories about their experiences with the medical system, some of which are from a patient’s point of view. No matter how well-intentioned or thought-out, there’s always a flaw in every system. For every flaw that’s ever found, a fix will be developed. Of course, fixes only work if they’re applied the way they were made to fix the flaw. Flaws become problems when not fixed, and in healthcare unfixed problems can lead to the worst of bad outcomes.
Patient safety should not be political, but patient safety so often comes down to policy. Hear what some states do to bring protections to the system to make it safer for everyone. Perhaps the biggest flaw in our healthcare system is the healthcare system itself. Run as a business for profit, some healthcare providers find ways to cut corners on patient safety. Others (both institutions and individuals) avoid legal action by avoiding their basic legal reporting responsibilities out of fear of repercussions from reprimanded staff.
Patient safety sits between the good and bad sides of our healthcare systems. Between Anne and Kay, there are lifetimes of experiences with the best and worst our healthcare systems can offer. This episode is the first of a very generous two-part interview.
Show Notes
What You Will Learn In This Episode.
- Why most doctors, nurses, and hospitals want to do the right thing and why the system still fails
- How burnout, addiction, and financial pressure can turn good providers into dangerous ones
- Why healthcare keeps repeating the same safety failures
- What the airline industry gets right about safety and healthcare doesn’t
- How profit pressures put patients last
- Why patients often feel powerless and what they can do to protect themselves
- Texas tort reform and how it closed courthouse doors to injured patients
- The Healthcare Quality Improvement Act of 1986 and why it hasn’t been updated in nearly 40 years
- Loopholes in the National Practitioner Data Bank that let hospitals avoid reporting dangerous doctors
- The shocking truth: not a single hospital has ever been punished for failing to report
About Kay and This Podcast: AdvoKayte.
Hosted by nationally recognized medical malpractice attorney Kay Van Wey, AdvoKAYte is dedicated to helping people find and use their voices, to understand the complexities of health care, and ultimately empower patients, families, and caregivers to successfully navigate through the worst aspects of today’s healthcare system.
“I don’t want to call it a calling, that’s too strong but, it’s my life’s purpose. It’s my life’s work, it’s my life’s purpose. There are things that I’ve seen, and things that I know after all of these decades of doing this work that other people need to know.” Kay Van Wey
Kay’s life purpose is clear: to expose the cover-ups, profit games, preventable errors, and predatory legislation that puts all of us at risk, and to empower YOU to protect yourselves and your loved ones
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