Fun Fact: Priests can’t give last rites to a fetus because, according to church doctrine, it was never actually alive.
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Their “God” supposedly gave us brains with which to figure things out. One of the things we have figured out is how to save lives in many instances. Too bad those “good Christians” feel such a need to twist that capacity into knots insuring that those who need the help get nothing.
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Is the whole point of the exercise.
EMTALA provides for a cause of action by the wronged patient. I hope a good attorney has been in touch with Farmer, because the University of Kansas Hospital System and Freeman Health System both violated EMTALA (they have already been reprimanded by DHHS) and the only question for the jury would appear to be the amount of damages.
Can you say “malpractice policy limits”? It seems to me that sending the lawyers in with a settlement offer at policy limits (and an explanation that these are the policy limits) would be a good strategy for Freeman Health Systems. I’m pretty sure that KU is covered by the State of Kansas’ risk management division (i.e., kind of, sort of self-insured). Figuring out how much to offer her might be an interesting exercise.
I’d start with an abject apology and an acknowledgement that the KU Hospital System fucked up in a major way and failed to live up to its obligations to her.
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The only reason the injunction is not national is because the injunction is based on a perceived conflict between Texas state laws and Federal law, and the question is which shall prevail. Judge Hendrix wanted the Texas law to prevail, so he conjured up some tortured logic that made Texas law supreme in Texas.
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And they must put in writing and Policy that they will never, ever, ever repeat that decision for any woman.
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Religion has caused more suffering in this world than wars (which are caused by religion for the most part).
It is not like the pro choice people have ever forced any of those “true believers” to undergo an abortion against their will. and never will do so. Why do they still think it is OK to force their beliefs on the rest of us, who depend on science rather than 14th Century Church Doctrine?
Religion…that’s why.
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Was this filed under,
Physician, Heal Thyself?
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Not only that but Doctors specializing in OB/GYN are abandoning the States with the most unreasonable of the abortion bans. So it is not just women with problem pregnancies who will suffer in those states. There will be women with Uterine, Cervical and other cancers who will go undiagnosed because there is no OB/GYN to diagnose them in time.
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That may have worked in the 14th century. It is not believable today…that is unless you are a Hyper religious nutcase.
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Doesn’t matter if it’s 1 or 1,000 or 1,000,000.
They don’t give a fuck. And why should they? They’re fighting a righteous fight as foot soldiers in God’s Army. You don’t retreat or compromise when you’re fighting evil on the side of the angels. And there literally is nothing they won’t do.
You have to stop looking at this rationally, because the fanatics you’re up against are incapable of that. Everyone sees himself as fighting a good fight. No one recognizes when they’re the bad guy because it’s already been justified and they’re brainwashed. We have to fight these motherfuckers like our very lives depend on it, because they do.
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When one marries politics with religion then yes 14th century understanding works.
I’m just so tired of saying that women’s bodies are not machines. Our periods are not always timed perfectly. Our insides are not always built to code. And even if a woman had two perfect pregnancies the third one could not be perfect.
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“Doctors told her she might die but she couldn’t have an abortion under state law until she got sicker”
In what insane universe should a patient be told to seek treatment only when they become “sicker?”
I wonder why my fuse has grown shorter and shorter these past several years.
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No, the diagnosis will be made: that’s a matter of detection, biopsy, and pathology confirmation. Those steps can be handled by internists, family practitioners, etc. What may be lacking are surgeons trained and experienced in the niceties of the sort of crotch plumbing needed for definitive treatment. But I don’t think that’s going to be a big problem.
What’s happened in the past is that OB/GYNs restrict their practice to gynecology. I know one OB/GYN here who abandoned obstetrics in the 90s in favor of urogynecology. (He did an additional fellowship year doing urologic surgery.)
The OB/GYNs who are leaving are the ones who enjoy practicing obstetrics, because practicing obstetrics means that the practice will encounter cases like Freeman’s. If a physician wants to practice responsible medicine as an obstetrician, being able to terminate a pregnancy that is a danger to the woman has to be a tool in the toolkit.
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They had better do some brushing up on their Gynecology then. In my experience, FPs are not usually on top of women’s internal issues. And if there are few GYNs to refer to, it is going to take more months than it does now to be seen and diagnosed.
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Tortured indeed.
“[Texas law] requires both a greater likelihood and a greater severity than the Guidance’s interpretation of EMTALA does,” the judge wrote. As a result, EMTALA could not compel hospitals to offer abortions that would not be permitted under state law, the judge wrote.
States can enlarge the scope of federal coverage, they cannot narrow it. From Federal Preemption: A Legal Primer:
Impossibility Preemption
The Supreme Court has held that federal law preempts state law when it is impossible to comply with both sets of laws. To illustrate this principle, the Court has explained that a hypothetical federal law forbidding the sale of avocados with more than 7% oil content would preempt a state law forbidding the sale of avocados with less than 8% oil content, because avocado sellers could not sell their products and comply with both laws.
Obstacle Preemption
Federal law also impliedly preempts state laws that pose an “obstacle” to the “full purposes and objectives” of Congress. In its obstacle preemption cases, the Supreme Court has held that state law can interfere with federal goals by frustrating Congress’s intent to adopt a uniform system of federal regulation; conflicting with Congress’s goal of establishing a regulatory “ceiling” for certain products or activities; or by impeding the vindication of a federal right.
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Sounds like some of these people at the hospitals should be fired.
And the hospitals should be sued, which will help find out who was making these decisions, which were against their own policies.
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FPs vary, but I don’t know of many who can’t do a Pap smear. Nurse practitioners working in Women’s Health are certainly capable of handling it, too. The NPs may be more on top of ‘internal issues’, too. In any event, a Pap smear is the primary screen for cervical cancer, and cervical cancer is the leading gynecologic cancer in incidence.
Physicians vary in their preferences. An OB/GYN who doesn’t particularly like the obstetrics side will likely just stop practicing obstetrics rather than leave. By contrast, an OB/GYN who really enjoys obstetrics (and I’ll concede that this describes the majority of them) is going to be more likely to leave a state where politicians without any experience in medicine are dictating their practice.
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But whom? The doctors and nurses? Or the administrators?
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It isn’t just medical doctors leaving “red” states. These states are already on the bottom end of the ranking for education, income, poverty, etc.
From the article,
Sasser had been a teacher for 10 years in Columbia and recently announced her resignation from the Columbia School Board, where she was serving her first term.
“As a family, we have made the difficult but necessary decision that Missouri is no longer a safe place for us,” she said at the May 8 board meeting.
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I’d start with the risk management team at KU Medical Center.
Granting that they were on the horns of a destructive dilemma: do they open up the hospital to a charge of violating a 1998 state law, or do they open up the hospital to an EMTALA investigation and probable lawsuit? You’re fucked either way, but the reasonable position (from my vantage, at least) is to treat the patient and wait to see if the Legislature is going to lose its shit or not.
The EMTALA violation would put the hospital’s federal funding at risk, and given the medical record appears indefensible. Allowing the obstetrics resident to induce labor would resolve the patient’s medical issue, and might not cause the Legislature to lose its shit. (That would depend on how far word of the incident spread.) Even if the Legislature were to lose its shit, the hospital could point at the medical record and its policies and procedures and Federal law in its defense.
The risk managers chose poorly.
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