Email (excerpted), Jerri Lynn Ward, partner, Garlo Ward P.C., May 23, 2014
From: Selby, Gardner
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2014 11:09 AM
Subject: Urgent inquiry for a fact check
Hello from Austin.
I write seeking your analyses at the suggestion of John Seago of Texas Right to Life as we fact-check the group’s claim in an ad that in Texas, a “faceless hospital panel can deny life-saving care” to your loved one even if they’re conscious, leaving 10 days for you to find another facility.
State associations representing hospitals and doctors as well as attorneys Thomas Mayo and Robert L. Fine have uniformly told us this statement misleads in that the panels, which rarely convene, are not faceless; that consciousness isn’t an element of the relevant law; and that in practice, individuals whose cases reach a panel are terminal, meaning their lives won’t be saved regardless of the panel’s decision.
Mayo suggested the law is more complex than the ad claim indicates. “Is it possible a conscious person could be denied life-sustaining treatment because of the actions of a committee? I guess… in the sense the ethics committee has to be consulted and if it is consulted and agees with the (attending) doctor, then this doctor after a period of time is not obligated to provide that treatment.”
Mayo ultimately called the statement “mostly wrong. There is no ‘faceless hospital panel,’ the ethics committee doesn’t deny life-saving care, and consciousness isn’t the issue. Although the statute doesn’t specify that” the “patient should be diagnosed with a terminal or” an “irreversible condition in order for this law to apply, that does appear to be the case as a matter of medical practice within the applicable standard of care.”
Thoughts?
If you like, I’d be happy to visit by phone. I hope to complete our review today.
Thanks.
g.
W. Gardner Selby
PolitiFact Texas
Austin American-Statesman
9:03 p.m.
May 23, 2014
Yes, I think they are faceless. None of my clients have ever known in advance who was going to be on the panel. Moreover, there is no transparency regarding the financial connections with the hospital that these member of the panels have. No one knows how much money they make by having privileges or by being employed by the hospital. My client never knew in advance any details of who was going to be on the committee making life and death decisions about their loved ones. I would call that being faceless.
I represented the family of Andrea Yates. According to her family, she was conscious and responding to her family. The hospital tried to portray them as nuts for thinking that she was conscious.