Texas Watch—Consumer Protection. Corporate Accountability. Citizen Advocacy.

Even before President Obama took office, the Affordable Care Act’s opponents touted tort reform as a central prong of their health care policy. Texas Gov. Rick Perry even claims that Texas added 23,000 new doctors thanks to a tort reform law he signed in 2003. A new academic study shows that the data simply does not back up this claim, however. According to the study, there is no evidence that tort reform attracted more doctors to Texas:

The bottom line: Our original findings remain correct. There is no evidence that the number of physicians per capita practicing in Texas is larger than it would have been without tort reform. Any effect of tort reform is too small for us to measure, against the background of other, larger forces affecting physician supply, both in Texas and nationally. This ‘non-result’ is broadly consistent with other studies, most of which find that state-level tort reform has a modest impact on physician supply. It also offers a counterpoint to these studies, by demonstrating that the small average effects found in other studies will not reliably appear in any given state, even one which undergoes especially dramatic reform.

Read More: ThinkProgress

Top secret meetings, back-door deals and confidential complaints are all a part of the Texas Board of Medical Examiners. The state board is supposed to be policing doctors and protecting the public but some patients complain the system is a prescription for failure.

In 2003 Texas lawmakers put caps on medial malpractice lawsuits but promised to keep a tight rein on doctors by beefing up the Texas board.

Fox 4 has been looking into the board’s practices for some time but late Monday afternoon we found another example of why some patients question who the board really protects.

…

“The job of the medical board is to police the profession, find the worst actors and kick them out,” said Alex Winslow of Texas Watch, a consumer watchdog group. “That’s their job. Slaps on the wrist, administrative penalties, that does not do the job.”

Read More: KDFW Fox 4

A 20-year-old Dallas woman whose arms and legs were amputated after a severe bacterial infection has filed a lawsuit accusing doctors at Medical City Dallas Hospital of withholding appropriate antibiotics for 38 hours after she was first seen in the emergency room.

Whitney Mitchell, in an 11-page petition filed this week in 44th Civil District Court, alleges that the delay allowed the infection to progress into a condition called septic shock, which eventually led to the amputation of her limbs.

Read More: The Dallas Morning News (subscription required)

Health care is a major issue in this presidential election. Everyone is trying to figure out how to pay for it without bankrupting our country.

During his run for the White House, Governor Rick Perry pushed states to do as Texas did back in 2003 and cap medical malpractice lawsuits. The idea was, by eliminating frivolous lawsuits and capping the amount a jury can award, those benefits would be passed down to patients in the form of lower healthcare costs and more doctors working in Texas.

But Fox 4 found some families don’t buy it.

Read More: KDFW Fox 4

Texas toddlers being held in restraints as dentists at corporate-run clinics performed unnecessary root canals were among the dental horror stories told Wednesday at a House Public Health Committee hearing at the state Capitol.

The Texas State Board of Dental Examiners, which regulates dental licensing in Texas, was the subject of criticism by members of Texans for Dental Reform and unaffiliated residents, who called for legislative reform while levying accusations of ineptitude, a pattern of withholding or obscuring negative information about dentists, and failure to act against corporate-run dental clinics committing Medicaid fraud and harming patients.

Read More: The Texas Tribune

More than a month ago two nurse assistants at Bandera Road’s Princeton Place nursing home started noticing problems. Sandra Lujan, a four-year veteran of the facility, claimed she saw elderly patients with abnormal and excessive bruising, including bruises in the shapes of fingers and torn skin on faces. Sonia Roman, a nurse assistant at Princeton Place for two years, also saw similar bruising. She also questioned whether there was enough staff to care for all 134 patients, saying many were routinely left unattended. She even confronted one nurse she saw verbally abusing and threatening an elderly patient.

Last month both brought reports of abuse and neglect to the nursing home’s administration. Within hours both were suspended for insubordination and eventually fired. The allegations are contained in a wrongful termination suit Lujan and Roman filed in Bexar County this week. Princeton Place administrator Joan Heinen declined to comment on the allegations, saying she hadn’t yet read the lawsuit.

Read More: San Antonio Current

U.S. Justice Department officials in Washington are weighing whether to investigate potential civil rights violations of psychiatric patients at Parkland Memorial Hospital.

Sarah Saldaña, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said the review stems from news stories in The Dallas Morning News exposing cases of neglect, violence and questionable deaths.

The articles “implicate potential federal violations,” Saldaña said, addressing The News’ editorial board. “We’ll look at everything.”

Read More: The Dallas Morning News (subscription required)

Maybe you thought they were a little kooky when I wrote about them last year.

Drivers on Preston Road sometimes taunt them. The middle-aged Frisco couple pickets every Sunday afternoon outside a Far North Dallas nursing home.

Bill and Kelly Putnam know that officials at the nursing home, Signature Pointe on the Lake, try to explain them away as “unstable.”

But after 31/2 years of protest, the Putnams finally have official verification of what they have long alleged — that errors inside Signature Pointe were involved in the gruesome death of Kelly’s father.

Last month, the Texas Board of Nursing issued an order of reprimand against a former Signature Pointe nurse. After lengthy investigation, the board found that Rosa Aurora Garcia committed major medical errors.

Read More: The Dallas Morning News (subscription required)

In a case testing the boundaries of tort reform, the Texas Supreme Court is weighing whether two female patients’ assault allegations against a doctor are health-care liability claims under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code Chapter 74, which caps punitive damages at $250,000.

Chapter 74 was the centerpiece of an omnibus tort reform law that took effect in 2003. The law’s proponents wanted to curtail rising med-mal premiums and provide patients with better access to physicians. Opponents argued the law would insulate doctors from the consequences of tortious conduct.

The law, also known as H.B. 4, requires plaintiffs to file expert reports in suits that involve medical malpractice allegations; otherwise courts can dismiss those suits. Chapter 74 caps punitive damages against defendant-doctors at $250,000; but under Chapter 41 of the code, the limitations on recovery do not apply to conduct described as a felony in the Texas Penal Code.

Read More: Texas Lawyer

Here’s a quiz for Patient Safety Awareness Week (and after): The number of Americans who die annually from preventable medical errors is:

A) 44,000-98,000, according to the Institute of Medicine

B) None, thanks to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s “100,000 Lives Campaign”

C) 90,000

D) No one’s really counting

The correct answer is, “D,” but I confess it’s a trick question. With a slight twist in wording, the right answer could also be “C,” from an as-yet-unpublished new estimate with a unique methodology. (More below.) The main point of this quiz, however, is to explore what we actually know about the toll taken by medical mistakes and to dispel some of the confusion about the magnitude of harm.

Read More: Health Affairs Blog