A recent KXAN report highlighted some of the problems which exist concerning The Texas Medical Board’s lax oversight of physicians.
Two Austin-based investigative reporters, Matt Grant and Dalton Huey dug into the issue, but they didn’t have to dig too far before they discovered some alarming issues still occurring within The Texas Medical Board. The Texas Medical Board is continuing to let things slip through the cracks allowing patients to continually be harmed by doctors who should no longer be practicing.
I strongly encourage you to watch each of the stories in this series below to see the alarming issues for yourselves.
KXAN Segment 1: https://www.kxan.com/investigations/5-years-after-dr-death-doctors-still-come-to-texas-to-leave-pasts-behind/
KXAN Segment 2: https://www.kxan.com/investigations/want-to-research-your-doctor-its-a-pain-in-texas/
You as a patient deserve more
The truth is, Texas patients are not getting the necessary and critical information they need to avoid another “Dr. Death” disaster. In Texas, it is becoming increasingly difficult to know if the doctor you’re about to go under the knife with really is who they say they are and will treat you with the utmost care. As a patient, wouldn’t you want to know if your doctor had a history of criminal charges, drug addiction, and patient deaths? Wouldn’t you also like to know if they were in good standing with the medical board, see their past patient feedback, and know their success rate? I think you would.
One Job
If you had ONE JOB to do, and it was to police dangerous doctors and you completely failed to do that, wouldn’t you expect to get fired? If that one job of yours that you didn’t do led to people being killed, would you expect to be fired? I would think so. Well, if you are the Texas Medical Board. You have ONE JOB. But, if you fail to do your job, you don’t get fired. You actually have no consequences at all, other than some sharp reporters calling you out publicly.
So why do we stand for it? Why do we continue to let bad things happen to undeserving patients? Wasn’t Dr. Death enough to force change at every level?
A Broken System
I can tell you as a medical malpractice lawyer and patient safety advocate that there are more Dr. Deaths out there. He was certainly not the last. I can tell you that nothing in the medical system has changed and they are not maintaining standards as they should. I can also tell you that you cannot rely on the Texas Medical Board to keep dangerous doctors away from you or your loved ones. Sadly, you cannot necessarily depend on hospitals to keep a dangerous doctor from harming you, either. The system is broken and needs to be fixed.
I strongly encourage you to watch each part of this series and educate yourself on ways to protect yourself from being the next victim.
Take care,
Kay Van Wey
